9 Best Robotic Process Automation (RPA) Software for Healthcare in 2026
Healthcare administration is a special kind of purgatory, built on a foundation of manual data entry, endless prior authorization forms, and claim denials over simple typos. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is sold as the cure-all, promising bots to handle the repetitive clicking that burns out your best staff. The reality is that most RPA platforms are either glorified macro recorders or needlessly complex systems requiring a dedicated IT team. We waded through nine of the most common tools you'll be pitched. This isn't a feature comparison; it's a field guide to help you separate the genuine workhorses from the expensive shelfware.
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Before You Choose: Essential Robotic Process Automation for Healthcare FAQs
What is Robotic Process Automation for Healthcare?
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) for Healthcare refers to the use of software 'bots' to automate repetitive, rules-based administrative tasks within healthcare organizations. These bots interact with digital systems and software applications—like Electronic Health Records (EHR), billing systems, and insurance portals—in the same way a human user would, by clicking, typing, and navigating through user interfaces.
What does Robotic Process Automation for Healthcare actually do?
RPA bots in healthcare execute high-volume, transactional processes that require no human judgment. This includes tasks such as extracting patient data from one system and entering it into another, processing insurance claims, verifying patient eligibility, scheduling appointments, sending reminders, and generating compliance reports. They effectively act as a digital workforce to handle the administrative burden, freeing up human staff for patient-facing activities.
Who uses Robotic Process Automation for Healthcare?
RPA is used by a wide range of healthcare entities, including hospitals, physician clinics, diagnostic labs, insurance payers, and medical billing companies. Within these organizations, the primary users are administrative departments such as patient registration, billing and coding, claims management, and compliance offices, who rely on RPA to streamline their workflows and reduce manual data handling.
What are the key benefits of using Robotic Process Automation for Healthcare?
The key benefits include significantly increased efficiency, reduced operational costs, and improved data accuracy by eliminating human error in data entry. Furthermore, it enhances regulatory compliance through detailed audit trails of bot activities, speeds up the revenue cycle by accelerating claims processing, and improves employee satisfaction by offloading tedious tasks, allowing staff to focus on more complex, value-added work.
Why should you buy Robotic Process Automation for Healthcare?
You should buy RPA because the scale of manual administrative work in healthcare is too large to handle efficiently with human staff alone. Consider a mid-sized clinic with 250 appointments per day. Each appointment requires a scheduling interaction and a reminder interaction, totaling 500 manual touchpoints daily. If each touchpoint (a call, email update, system entry) takes just 3 minutes, that's 1,500 minutes, or 25 hours of work every single day. That's the equivalent of more than 3 full-time employees dedicated solely to appointment logistics. RPA can automate nearly 100% of that work, 24/7, without errors, freeing up those employees to manage complex patient needs and improve the quality of care.
Is Robotic Process Automation (RPA) HIPAA compliant?
Yes, RPA can be fully HIPAA compliant when implemented correctly. The software bots are configured to operate with unique, secure credentials, just like a human employee. All of their actions are logged and auditable, creating a clear record of access to Protected Health Information (PHI). Secure RPA platforms ensure that data is handled within encrypted environments and that the bots adhere strictly to the access controls of the underlying applications they use.
What are some common use cases for RPA in healthcare?
Common use cases include: 1) Claims Processing: Automating data extraction from claim forms and submission to payer portals. 2) Prior Authorization: Automatically gathering required clinical data and submitting authorization requests. 3) Patient Scheduling: Managing appointment bookings, confirmations, and reminders across multiple systems. 4) Medical Coding: Assisting coders by automatically pulling relevant patient data for review. 5) Revenue Cycle Management: Automating payment posting, denial management, and patient follow-ups.
What is the difference between RPA and AI in healthcare?
Think of RPA as the 'hands' and AI as the 'brain'. RPA is designed to follow a predefined set of rules to execute a process (e.g., 'Copy this value from field A and paste it into field B'). It is task-oriented. AI (Artificial Intelligence) and Machine Learning, on the other hand, can analyze unstructured data, recognize patterns, and make predictions or decisions (e.g., 'Analyze this clinical note to suggest a possible diagnosis code'). They are often used together, where an AI might interpret data and the RPA bot then executes the resulting administrative task.
Quick Comparison: Our Top Picks
| Rank | Robotic Process Automation for Healthcare | Score | Start Price | Best Feature |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | UiPath | 4 / 5.0 | Custom Quote | The visual workflow designer in UiPath Studio is genuinely intuitive. Even non-developers can string together a basic automation using the screen recorder and activity panes. |
| 2 | Automation Anywhere | 3.8 / 5.0 | Custom Quote | The drag-and-drop Bot Creator is genuinely usable by business analysts, not just developers. |
| 3 | Microsoft Power Automate | 3.8 / 5.0 | $15/month | Unbeatable native integration with the entire Microsoft 365 suite (SharePoint, Teams, Outlook, etc.) through its extensive library of Connectors. |
| 4 | Infinitus | 3.7 / 5.0 | Custom Quote | The 'Eva' digital assistant genuinely frees up staff from mind-numbing insurance verification calls, letting them focus on patient-facing tasks. |
| 5 | Fortra (Automate) | 3.5 / 5.0 | Custom Quote | The drag-and-drop Task Builder allows non-programmers to build surprisingly complex automation routines without writing code. |
| 6 | Blue Prism (SS&C) | 3.4 / 5.0 | Custom Quote | The 'Process Studio' is a clear, flowchart-style visual designer that non-coders can actually understand and use for basic automation. |
| 7 | IBM Robotic Process Automation | 3.4 / 5.0 | $999/month | Includes built-in Process Mining tools to help discover which internal processes are actually good candidates for automation. |
| 8 | Kofax | 3.3 / 5.0 | Custom Quote | Exceptional data extraction and OCR accuracy, particularly with its VRS (VirtualReScan) technology that automatically cleans up messy scanned documents. |
| 9 | Pegasystems | 2.9 / 5.0 | Custom Quote | The low-code App Studio genuinely allows business analysts to build and modify workflows without waiting for developers. |
1. UiPath: Best for Enterprise-Scale Process Automation
Let's get this out of the way: UiPath is the expensive, 800-pound gorilla of RPA. The power is undeniable, but so is the complexity. You build bots in the `UiPath Studio`, which is a full-blown developer environment, not some macro recorder you can hand off to an intern. Then you have to manage the whole fleet with the `Orchestrator`, which is practically a full-time job in itself. For large-scale, critical operations, it's reliable. For everyone else, it's probably overkill.
Pros
- The visual workflow designer in UiPath Studio is genuinely intuitive. Even non-developers can string together a basic automation using the screen recorder and activity panes.
- Its component marketplace is extensive. You can usually find a pre-built activity for common tasks, saving hours of custom development.
- For large-scale deployments, the UiPath Orchestrator provides serious control for managing queues, scheduling jobs, and monitoring entire bot fleets from a central dashboard.
Cons
- The licensing model is notoriously complex and expensive, creating a high barrier to entry and unpredictable scaling costs.
- Building truly resilient, enterprise-grade bots requires a steep learning curve and often more coding knowledge than the 'low-code' marketing suggests.
- The platform can be resource-intensive, requiring significant infrastructure investment for the Orchestrator and robot execution environments.
2. Automation Anywhere: Best for Enterprise-scale process automation
Don't even think about this for a small business. Automation Anywhere is built for massive enterprises that need to govern a whole army of bots. The entire sales pitch revolves around its `Control Room`, which is basically a central command for your automation fleet. This is exactly what gives CIOs peace of mind, but I've consistently heard from developers that building bots in it is clunkier than the competition. You're paying for industrial-strength scale and oversight, not a friendly developer experience. Budget for training.
Pros
- The drag-and-drop Bot Creator is genuinely usable by business analysts, not just developers.
- Built-in IQ Bot for intelligent document processing actually works for unstructured data like invoices without needing a separate AI tool.
- Its centralized Control Room provides serious governance and credential management, which is essential for deploying bots at scale without creating a security nightmare.
Cons
- The learning curve is steep and unforgiving; this is not a tool for casual business users, it requires dedicated developers.
- Total Cost of Ownership is high, factoring in expensive licenses and the heavy infrastructure needed to run the Control Room.
- Major version upgrades, like the migration to the A360 platform, often feel like a full re-implementation project, not a simple update.
3. Microsoft Power Automate: Best for Automating the Microsoft ecosystem.
For any company already paying for Microsoft 365, Power Automate is a no-brainer. It's essentially Microsoft's version of Zapier, made to glue together SharePoint, Teams, and Outlook. Building simple `Flows` to do things like save email attachments is easy enough. The problem is that the moment you try to connect to a non-Microsoft service, things get complicated and unreliable. The quality of third-party connectors is a real crapshoot. It's 'free' with your subscription, but don't expect it to replace a dedicated tool without a fight.
Pros
- Unbeatable native integration with the entire Microsoft 365 suite (SharePoint, Teams, Outlook, etc.) through its extensive library of Connectors.
- The visual designer is genuinely easy for non-technical staff to build basic 'if-this-then-that' style automations without writing code.
- Core functionality is often bundled with existing Microsoft 365 business licenses, making the barrier to entry practically zero for many companies.
Cons
- The licensing model is famously confusing and gets expensive fast once you need premium connectors or unattended flows.
- Debugging a failed flow is a nightmare; the run history interface is clunky and error messages are often cryptic.
- The expression language required for anything beyond basic logic is non-intuitive for business users without a coding background.
4. Infinitus: Best for Automating healthcare benefit calls
To be honest, the idea of an AI making benefits verification calls for healthcare sounded like a recipe for disaster. But Infinitus actually pulled it off. Their digital assistant, `Eva`, sounds surprisingly human and can navigate phone trees and handle the back-and-forth with payers without getting confused. The point isn't to replace your staff; it's to get them off mind-numbing hold music so they can deal with complex cases. You'll have to audit the first few hundred calls, but the time savings are undeniable.
Pros
- The 'Eva' digital assistant genuinely frees up staff from mind-numbing insurance verification calls, letting them focus on patient-facing tasks.
- Reduces manual data entry errors by having the system transcribe and input benefit details directly from the calls.
- It can operate at a scale impossible for human staff, placing hundreds of concurrent calls during peak times or prior to appointments.
Cons
- The AI, 'Eva', can get tripped up by non-standard phone trees or human agents who go off-script, requiring manual intervention.
- Integration with older or highly customized EHR/EMR systems can be a significant and costly technical project.
- The cost structure is prohibitive for smaller practices that don't have a high volume of benefits verification calls to automate.
5. Fortra (Automate): Best for Enterprise IT process automation.
You don't buy Fortra's Automate because it's pretty. The interface, especially the drag-and-drop `Task Builder`, looks like it's straight out of 2008. But here's the thing: it just runs. Its specialty is communicating with ancient, on-premise systems that modern cloud tools can't handle. I've seen it used to automate tedious mainframe interactions that absolutely had to run without fail every single night. If you need a digital plumber for your backend systems, this is a very reliable choice.
Pros
- The drag-and-drop Task Builder allows non-programmers to build surprisingly complex automation routines without writing code.
- Its huge library of pre-built actions for common systems (Excel, terminals, web services) saves a ton of development time.
- Offers strong centralized management features for deploying and monitoring bots at scale across an organization.
Cons
- The learning curve is deceptively steep. It bills itself as 'no-code', but building anything beyond a basic file-move task requires a developer's mindset and a lot of time spent in their documentation.
- Debugging workflows is a genuine headache. When a bot fails, the error logs are often vague, forcing you to manually step through the entire process to find the broken action. It's a huge time sink.
- Scaling bots feels bolted-on. The Automate Ops Center, their orchestration tool, lacks the sophistication of competitors for managing dozens of digital workers and complex schedules. It works, but it's clumsy.
6. Blue Prism (SS&C): Best for Enterprise automation with governance.
If UiPath is for coders, then Blue Prism is for the IT governance committee. This is the RPA platform you pick when the audit trail is more important than how fast you can build something. Everything is pieced together in their flowchart-based `Process Studio`, which makes bots rigid but also incredibly controlled and secure. This approach is a headache for quick projects, but it's exactly what's required in regulated industries like banking. Your bots will be stable, but building them will be a slow, deliberate process.
Pros
- The 'Process Studio' is a clear, flowchart-style visual designer that non-coders can actually understand and use for basic automation.
- Its object-oriented design is excellent for creating reusable components, which drastically simplifies maintenance and scaling across a large organization.
- Top-tier governance and security features are built-in, with detailed audit logs and granular access controls that satisfy enterprise compliance teams.
Cons
- Prohibitive Cost & Complex Licensing: Not a tool for small or mid-sized businesses; pricing is enterprise-grade and confusing.
- Steep Learning Curve: Requires dedicated developers and a C#/.NET background; not friendly to 'citizen developers'.
- Heavy Infrastructure Footprint: Its on-premise legacy means setup and maintenance are more demanding than cloud-native alternatives.
7. IBM Robotic Process Automation: Best for Large-Scale Enterprise Automation
Look, if your company's blood runs IBM blue, this is the automation platform you're probably going to get. It’s exactly what you'd expect: enterprise-grade, expensive, and focused more on governance than a slick user experience. The `IBM RPA Studio` is capable, but to be honest, it feels dated. Its real strength is managing thousands of bots where security and compliance are non-negotiable. Anyone else should just look elsewhere; this is a heavy-duty tool for organizations with heavy-duty oversight.
Pros
- Includes built-in Process Mining tools to help discover which internal processes are actually good candidates for automation.
- Strong integration with IBM Watson allows for creating 'smarter' bots that can handle unstructured data, like reading varied invoice formats.
- Offers robust, enterprise-level governance and security controls, which is a requirement for deploying bots in regulated industries.
Cons
- The bot development studio (IBM RPA Studio) has a steep learning curve and feels clunky compared to more modern competitors.
- Total cost of ownership is high, often requiring significant investment in both licensing and supporting infrastructure.
- Integration with non-IBM systems can be more complex and less straightforward than with other leading RPA platforms.
8. Kofax: Best for Enterprise Document Automation
First, they're called Tungsten Automation now, but everyone I know still calls them Kofax. This is not a tool for scanning your receipts. Their `TotalAgility` platform is industrial-strength machinery for companies drowning in paper forms—think thousands of daily invoices or insurance claims. It is remarkably accurate at pulling data from messy documents, but implementing it is a major project that will almost certainly require consultants. It's overkill for most, but essential for a few.
Pros
- Exceptional data extraction and OCR accuracy, particularly with its VRS (VirtualReScan) technology that automatically cleans up messy scanned documents.
- Provides a genuinely unified automation platform in TotalAgility, combining document capture, process orchestration, and RPA without needing to bolt on third-party tools.
- Built to handle enormous document volumes, making it a reliable choice for enterprise-scale digital mailroom or invoice processing operations.
Cons
- Licensing model is notoriously complex and expensive, often based on confusing per-page or per-user metrics that make budgeting difficult.
- The platform requires significant upfront investment in specialized developer training or costly professional services to implement correctly.
- The user interface in core products like TotalAgility feels dated and clunky compared to modern, cloud-native automation platforms.
9. Pegasystems: Best for Large-scale process automation
Pega isn't software you 'try out'—it's a massive, company-wide commitment to untangling horrifyingly complex business processes. Their `Case Management` framework is one of the few things on the market that can actually make sense of the spaghetti logic inside big banks and government agencies. But don't fall for the 'low-code' marketing. You need a team of expensive, certified Pega developers to make it do anything useful. It’s a beast, but sometimes a beast is what you need to fix a decade of process debt.
Pros
- The low-code App Studio genuinely allows business analysts to build and modify workflows without waiting for developers.
- Combines process automation (BPM), case management, and AI-driven decisioning (Customer Decision Hub) on a single platform, reducing integration chaos.
- Built from the ground up to handle massive, complex, enterprise-level processes that smaller platforms simply can't manage.
Cons
- The platform's complexity creates a steep learning curve, requiring expensive, certified developers for any serious implementation.
- Total cost of ownership is exceptionally high due to enterprise-level licensing fees and the need for specialized Pega architects.
- The core developer environment, including Dev Studio, often feels dated and sluggish compared to more modern low-code alternatives.