Rhazes workflows worth building first
Six clinical Rhazes workflows that pay for themselves quickly, and how to judge which parts of your practice are worth automating at all.
Updated
What to automate
The work worth automating is rarely the interesting part of medicine. It is the tail: the letters after the clinic, the follow-ups you meant to file, the results you meant to chase, the summary you write from a record you have already read once.
Three questions pick a good candidate:
- Do I do this the same way every time? If yes, a workflow can do it the same way every time too.
- Does it get skipped when I am busy? That is exactly what a schedule fixes.
- Am I re-reading something I have already read? A workflow reads it once and hands you the output.
And one that rules candidates out: does this need a judgement only I can make? If the answer sits in the middle of the sequence rather than at the end, that is what an Ask step is for. If the whole thing is judgement, it is a conversation, not a workflow.
Where the judgement stays
None of the workflows below decide anything. They gather, draft, calculate and file, then hand you something to check. That is the shape to copy: automation carries the work up to the decision and stops.
Point them at your own guidelines
Every example assumes a Sources step pointing at your own protocols. That is what makes the output follow your service rather than generic guidance, and it is the difference between a workflow you use and one you argue with. See Choosing what a workflow can draw on.
Build small ones and chain them
Resist building one workflow that does everything. Several small workflows chained together are easier to get right, easier to test, and reusable: the documentation workflow you build for clinic can be the finish of your intake workflow too.
See Chaining workflows together.
Build one, not six
Pick the one that annoys you most, build it, run it by hand for a week, and only then schedule it. A workflow you have watched succeed ten times is one you can leave running; a workflow you scheduled on day one is one you will not trust and will end up checking anyway.