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Artificial Intelligence and Automation in Hospital Administrative Systems: A Scoping Review

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Background: Hospital administrative processes including billing, scheduling, and medical records management—are critical to health system performance but are often characterized by inefficiencies, high operational costs, and workforce burden. Artificial intelligence (AI) and automation technologies, including robotic process automation (RPA) and natural language processing (NLP), have emerged as potential solutions to streamline these processes and enhance productivity.

Objective: This scoping review aimed to synthesize existing evidence on the use of AI and automation in hospital administrative functions, focusing on efficiency gains, cost savings, implementation barriers, and ethical and regulatory considerations.

Methods: A scoping search of peer-reviewed literature was conducted across major electronic databases including PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar. Studies published between 2015 and 2025 that examined AI-based or automation-driven interventions in hospital administrative settings were included. Eligible studies addressed applications in billing, scheduling, records management, hospital information systems, or workflow optimization. Data was extracted and synthesized narratively due to heterogeneity in study designs and outcome measures.

Results: The review identified substantial evidence that AI and automation improve administrative efficiency through reduction of processing time, minimization of manual errors, and optimization of resource allocation. RPA demonstrated significant benefits in billing and claims processing, while NLP enhanced documentation accuracy and records retrieval. Several studies reported measurable cost savings and productivity improvements following implementation. However, common barriers included integration challenges with legacy systems, limited interoperability, data quality concerns, staff resistance, insufficient training, high upfront costs, and uncertain short-term return on investment. Regulatory and governance challenges, particularly data protection compliance and algorithm transparency were also frequently highlighted.

Conclusion: AI and automation technologies show considerable promise in transforming hospital administrative processes by improving efficiency and reducing operational costs. Nevertheless, successful implementation requires strong governance frameworks, workforce capacity building, financial planning, and ethical oversight. Future research should focus on longitudinal cost-effectiveness evaluations and context-specific implementation strategies, particularly in resource-limited health systems.

Improving India’s Pandemic Response through a Health Information System Reform

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Despite stringent lockdown measures to curb the spread of the 2019 Coronavirus disease (COVID-19), India remains vulnerable to an uncontrolled rise in the number of cases and deaths. Furthermore, in spite of the high number of recorded cases, the actual case counts may be much higher due to poor data reporting of probable and confirmed cases of COVID-19 from all of India’s states. Being a populous country with the potential to become the world’s COVID-19 epicenter, it should be the Indian government’s top priority to strengthen India’s health information system (HIS) to support their infectious disease response.

To ensure that this paper is guided by current research on India’s HIS performance, a search strategy was developed on Ovid MEDLINE using database-specific subject headings and text words. The search terms used included: “health information systems” AND “India” AND “COVID-19” OR “Coronavirus.”

Most district level COVID-19 information management is still paper-based, and with India’s vast terrain, this approach is prone to data compilation errors. Furthermore, India’s fragmented HIS has led to ineffective collaboration between COVID-19 response agencies at the central, state, and district levels, thereby creating barriers pertaining to the compilation and coordination of COVID-19 data.

Investing in the use of technology is a viable approach to strengthen the country’s HIS performance during an infectious disease pandemic. To address the challenges associated with India’s fragmented HIS, the government is encouraged to implement a national regulatory body to monitor health information inputs and outputs.