In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the fragility of global healthcare supply chains was laid bare. From delayed vaccine distribution to shortages of critical medicines, bottlenecks revealed themselves at every stage. The truth is, while the science behind new treatments and technologies is advancing at remarkable speed, the systems designed to get these innovations to patients are often decades out of date.
For organisations in health, pharma, and biotech, automation is no longer optional – it’s essential.
The Supply Chain Challenge
Healthcare supply chains are uniquely complex. They involve everything from manufacturing highly regulated products to navigating global logistics, all while meeting stringent compliance and data security requirements. The pandemic magnified several persistent problems:
- Archaic systems that don’t integrate – Many healthcare providers, manufacturers, and distributors operate on platforms that haven’t evolved in a decade or more. These systems can’t easily “talk” to each other, creating data silos that slow decision-making and complicate collaboration.
- Limited interoperability – Even when new tools are introduced, they often fail to seamlessly connect with existing infrastructure, leading to costly workarounds.
- Security and data protection concerns – Patient and clinical data is highly sensitive, with strict governance required across every step of the supply chain.
- User experience challenges – Interfaces are rarely designed with accessibility in mind. For patients or healthcare workers who may be ill, disabled, or visually impaired, interacting with outdated systems can be frustrating and even impossible.
Why RPA and Automated Testing Matter
Healthcare supply chains rely on precision, speed, and trust – three areas where Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and GUI test automation can deliver game-changing results.
- End-to-end process automation removes repetitive manual tasks, reducing the risk of human error and accelerating workflows.
- Cross-platform automated testing ensures that every system – from inventory management tools to patient-facing portals – performs flawlessly, no matter the device or operating system.
- Rapid deployment means that even in time-critical scenarios, such as a pandemic response, systems can be tested, validated, and launched in days, not months.
- Accessibility-focused testing ensures digital solutions work for all users, including those with disabilities, aligning with healthcare’s duty of care.
- At T-Plan, we’ve seen first-hand how these capabilities can transform outcomes. During the pandemic, we helped a defence-sector client build and test a COVID-19 public health app across multiple platforms in record time – a level of agility the healthcare supply chain urgently needs.
The Critical Role of UI Testing in Healthcare Systems
While the back-end processes of supply chain systems are important, it’s often the user interface that determines whether the technology succeeds or fails in real-world use. In healthcare, this is magnified by the diversity of users:
- Clinicians under intense time pressure
- Patients who may be elderly, seriously ill, or have cognitive impairments
- Administrative staff navigating complex, multi-system workflows
- Researchers working with sensitive, high-volume datasets
The Technology Adoption Review 2025 highlights that integration with legacy systems and ensuring technology is “fit for purpose” are critical adoption barriers in the life sciences sector. Without rigorous UI testing, new systems can fail on something as simple as poor navigation, unreadable data displays, or incompatibility with accessibility tools.
T-Plan’s UI testing approach addresses this by:
- Testing cross-platform consistency so that interfaces work identically on Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, and Android.
- Validating accessibility compliance against WCAG and NHS Digital Service standards.
- Simulating real-world scenarios, such as users with visual impairments or limited mobility, ensuring the design works for all patient demographics.
- Enabling non-disruptive in-situ testing on live environments, which is crucial when downtime can affect patient care or research timelines.
- Catching UI performance bottlenecks early, ensuring that even under heavy data loads, interfaces remain responsive.
The result is software that not only passes functional tests but is genuinely usable in the demanding, high-stakes context of healthcare delivery.
Government Findings Back the Case for Automation
The Technology Adoption Review 2025 confirms that the UK lags behind other advanced economies in technology adoption, with productivity 14% lower than France and 22% lower than Germany. In the life sciences sector specifically, the report identifies regulatory barriers, high manufacturing costs, and restricted access to high-quality data as key obstacles slowing innovation and adoption of advanced digital tools.
Notably:
- Only a fraction of life sciences organisations have successfully integrated AI, despite its potential to boost UK productivity by 1.5% per year – equivalent to £47 billion annually.
- High upfront investment costs, coupled with skills shortages, are cited by over 50% of firms as primary barriers to digital.
- The NHS’s complex and often slow procurement signals further delay technology uptake in critical healthcare.
These findings align closely with the challenges we see daily – and underscore why healthcare needs faster, smarter adoption pathways supported by RPA, automated process testing, and robust UI validation.
The Way Forward
The pandemic underscored a hard truth: in healthcare, delays can cost lives. Whether it’s getting a breakthrough cancer therapy to market or distributing critical supplies during an outbreak, the supply chain must be fast, adaptable, and resilient.
Automated process testing and RPA are the backbone of that transformation – ensuring accuracy, accelerating delivery, protecting patient data, and making sure every user interaction is smooth, safe, and accessible.
At T-Plan, we deliver Trusted Business Automation with the cross-platform flexibility, compliance rigour, and speed today’s healthcare leaders need. Because in an industry where every second counts, the technology you rely on can’t be years behind.
