Microsoft 365 Copilot for Laboratory Staff

Laboratory operations can be classified under the critical services category. It is one of the key areas medical staff depend on completely, as their outcomes decide crucial aspects like the position of a patient’s health condition to the decision of new drugs to be promoted to public use, the reputation of a medical brand, etc.

This makes lab technicians to be highly responsible and under high pressure, for such critical outcomes at the right time. Microsoft 365 Copilot can bring the best solution to such a demand and can transform the way how laboratory operations are done today.

We will get into details of some key challenges in this aspect and how Copilot’s features can become a problem solver.

Handle Shortage of Time and Resources Efficiently

Being a time-constrained service, lab technicians are always being followed up closely for the results of samples taken for a specific purpose. This could be blood, urine, or tissue samples for patients. Can be a drug sample to be tested and an outcome to be given for validation etc.

Often, they face an availability shortage as experienced staff are sought for such complex tasks and tests.

Integrating Copilot into daily operations can bring the knowledge repository available from experienced technicians to new staff. This is possible by developing SOPs and relevant test result databases that are already performed and by ingestion of data in the Copilot platform.

By invoking a simple prompt, staff can get accurate answers and SOPs to follow and quickly get the outcome. This can be completed faster without having to wait for senior staff availability. Also checking the outcomes against records of the past is made simple. Thereby improving the quality of outcomes with limited time and reducing dependency on seniors.

Enhance the Quality of Internal Staff Collaboration

Most often the laboratories are built in a way to isolate test rooms for different purposes and that can be even separated by floors. This practical isolation can reduce the collaboration of the staff by a great deal, making it little or no collaboration both personally and professionally and just indulging in their mundane tasks day after day.

Microsoft 365 Copilot with its intuitive smart chats can pave the way for staff to use this platform on devices like lab PCs, iPads, laptops, etc. This can enable staff to collaborate easily with video and audio messages without the need to meet in person, even when separated by buildings or floors.

This can enable knowledge sharing and faster processing of samples with better collaboration among dependent services within the Lab. Fostering a better culture and limiting the possibilities of inter-staff conflicts.

Management Training and Connect

A lab technician is in a position of undue pressure most times, which reduces their possibility of getting in touch with management staff or being mentored by them to take up management roles.

Microsoft 365 Copilot can be a great tool to build such collaboration virtually with management teams with its smart chat platform. Can give access with just a link to great resources that could help train staff when they get some time off or on a less busy day. Managers can directly guide and mentor new staff over such smart platforms rather than in person.

This helps build a better management-staff relationship and reduces the pressure staff go through, by enabling knowledge resources that come in handy while at work. Thus, taking the quality of lab services to a higher level.

Have Automated World-Class 24/7 Customer Service

Having a 24/7 service desk to handle overwhelmingly higher incoming queries is a mandate for any lab services operation. This becomes even more complex when there are situations like pandemic occur and we did see such situations during 2020, and 2021.

To handle such a higher volume of calls, Microsoft 365 Copilot can offer a great feature of Chatbots trained with AI specific to the purpose of lab report handling. It can handle any query that is posted by customers and patients and can give live tracking of reports and the status of their tests. Also, fully automated versions can even email such reports to the patients, reducing time spent on this task. And can come up with a confirmation report of the message sent.

This can reduce the response times given to such queries by over 50% where staff are freed up with such pressure and can take up more testing tasks to speed up the results and outcomes. Laboratory Efficiency with Copilot can reach a higher level when such an unprecedented situation comes and can improve the rating and reputation of the overall organization.

Conclusion

Being a critical service category, lab services can impact major outcomes of patient results to drug test results. This puts staff in a very crucial state, and they are often prone to fatigue and burnout.

Microsoft Copilot with its AI-powered features can be a great solution with options like automating reporting tasks over emails, handling a smart 24/7 desk, increasing positive staff collaboration, enabling management staff training, and connecting. Such an approach can completely transform the way, how laboratories operate traditionally to an international standard of futuristic customer service.