Smart Referrals: Delivered By Robots, Designed for People.

Smart Referrals is Berkshire Healthcare’s programme to improve how referrals are received, checked, routed and processed.

It uses accessible digital forms, agreed rules and automation to reduce avoidable manual handling and improve referral data quality.

Smart Referrals is a major priority for the Intelligent Automation programme. Internal strategy identifies it as the flagship IA/RPA priority for 2026–2028 and the strongest organisation wide opportunity to improve referral and intake processes.

Why Smart Referrals matters

Referral processes can become inconsistent when services use different forms, different routes and different manual checks.

Smart Referrals helps by making referral information clearer, more structured and easier to process. This can reduce missing information, support safer routing and help staff spend less time on avoidable administration.

How it works

Smart Referrals can support:

• Inclusion criteria
• digital referral forms
• File attachments
• relevant questions based on referral type
• data checking
• administrative routing
• notifications to patients and services
• exception handling
• service visibility

Exceptions

Not every referral can be processed automatically. If information is missing, unclear or outside the agreed rules, the referral follows an exception route for human review.

Benefits for services

Smart Referrals aims to:

• reduce avoidable manual processing
• improve referral data quality
• support more consistent referral routes
• improve visibility of demand
• reduce rework caused by missing information
• support better use of staff time

Smart Referrals is not just a form replacement project. It is a pathway improvement programme supported by automation, service design, governance and human oversight.