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About

Maria Manuela Cruz-Cunha is a researcher whose work sits at the intersection of automation technology, healthcare administration, and sustainable business transformation. Her scholarship centers primarily on Robotic Process Automation (RPA), exploring how software-driven automation can relieve organizations — particularly in healthcare — of burdensome administrative processes while supporting sustainable implementation strategies. Cruz-Cunha's most influential contribution, a 2023 literature review on decision models for sustainable RPA implementation (15 citations), identified a critical gap in the field: the scarcity of structured decision support frameworks for organizations adopting RPA. Building on this, her 2024 review examining RPA in medical and healthcare administrative services (11 citations) demonstrated how automation technologies can address the sector's notoriously heavy administrative load, connecting clinical and operational departments more effectively around patient care. Her more recent work extends into governance and accountability, with a 2025 audit framework designed to guide RPA project control throughout the technology lifecycle. Across her publications, Cruz-Cunha consistently addresses both the technical and social dimensions of automation, including workforce impact and organizational change. With a growing citation record and a focused research agenda, she is establishing herself as a thoughtful voice in the emerging field of intelligent process automation for healthcare and beyond.