London-based HealthTech TERN Group has raised £19m in Series A funding to expand its AI-powered clinical workforce platform, as health systems worldwide deal with critical staff shortages.
The round was led by Notion Capital and brings the company’s total funding to £26m.
With the new funding, the business will also scale its UK operations, deepen partnerships with NHS trusts and care groups and continue investing in international talent preparation.
The World Health Organisation predicts an 18m worker shortfall in healthcare by 2030. In the UK alone, the NHS spends more than £10bn annually on locums – temporary staff – to plug the gap.
TERN Group’s platform combines AI-driven workflows with human-led support for training, relocation and settlement.
It integrates sourcing, credentialing, training and onboarding into a single enterprise-ready system, reportedly cutting time-to-hire by 60% and delivering threefold cost savings compared to locum-heavy models.
The company already works with over 100 global healthcare clients, including 18 NHS trusts, and has expanded from one to six markets in the past year – Germany, UK, UAE, KSA, Japan and the USA.
More than 650,000 professionals from 13 countries have signed up to use its platform.
“Every trust we meet tells us the same story: they need qualified staff now, but they cannot risk patient safety or compliance,” said Avinav Nigam, founder and CEO of TERN Group.
“Our platform gives them speed without compromise, predictability without cost inflation and sustainability where locum dependency has become unsustainable.
“TERN Group’s mission is for every placement to set off a chain reaction: a nurse arriving on time means a ward runs smoothly, which means patients get treated faster. This raise enables us to make those chain reactions happen at scale, across the UK and beyond.”
Itxaso del Palacio, partner at Notion Capital, added: “TERN Group is tackling one of the healthcare industry’s most urgent structural challenges: affordable, reliable and sustainable recruitment.
“By combining compliance with AI-driven efficiency, they are proving that workforce delivery doesn’t have to be slow or fragmented. It can be predictable infrastructure, which is why they are already becoming the trusted partner for healthcare systems in the UK and beyond.”
Foresight Group leads University of Liverpool spinout’s seed round