Bot, Anyone? The Question—What Services Can You Automate?

A few weeks ago, my colleague Monica E. Oss wrote about how a group of organizations—Amazon, Apple, and Google among others—make up the new "left flank" in health care (see Watch Out For Your Left Flank). These organizations are blurring the line between the tech field and the health care field. One of the key elements in this “blurring” of the line is the automation of health and human service functions that previously required human work.

This tech-enabled automation is frequently accomplished through "bots", which are computer applications that perform automated and repetitive tasks (see What Is . . .