Healthcare workforce management platform Lantum has raised £11.4 million to reduce the pressure on NHS staff.
The funding round led by Finch Capital, with Piton Capital, Samos and US-based Cedars-Sinai Hospital also participating.
Over 30,000 clinical and non-clinical staff, and 50% of GP practices, now use Lantum to keep essential healthcare services running in England.
Despite being the fifth largest employer in the world, the NHS remains heavily reliant on exorbitant recruitment agencies and fragmented staff-led initiatives such as WhatsApp, spreadsheets and messaging groups to resolve staff shortages and schedules.
Lantum aims to transform this with a goal to reduce the NHS’s £4 billion-a-year spend on temporary staffing.
During the pandemic, Lantum’s intelligent management platform has been the backbone to primary care, offering a powerful scheduling software that can also rapidly locate clinicians to fill shift gaps as well as setting up more than 150 clinics across the country to deliver over 13.6m doses of the COVID-19 vaccine.
Lantum was founded in 2012 by Melissa Morris, an NHS Accelerator Fellow and previously a management consultant at McKinsey & Co., alongside Dr Ishani Patel, a GP and HarnessCare EHub NWL digital accelerator clinical lead.
“The NHS is in crisis,” said CEO Morris. “Healthcare professionals are unable to meet the current demand for care. Staff shortages are high, backlogs of patients, built up over the pandemic, are at dangerous levels, and front-line staff are experiencing extreme burnout like never before.
“Our collective focus must be on alleviating the current pressure in a way that addresses issues with clinician quality of life.
“We made it possible for thousands of healthcare professionals to take control of their schedules and find and book work flexibly during the pandemic, meaning that six million more appointments have taken place. We have helped deliver millions of vaccine doses by offering our scheduling software to hundreds of clinics, and have helped bring retired doctors back into the fold to fight the virus.
“Today’s cash injection will enable us to go further. Our booking volumes have more than doubled in the past 12 months, with 14,000 more clinicians onboarded. It’s essential Lantum has the capabilities to meet this demand; we need to significantly drive recruitment and bolster our digital offering.”
Aman Ghei, partner at Finch Capital, commented: “Lantum has had a momentous year. Their staff count has doubled in the last year alone, as they work to help those on the frontline of this pandemic. Digital transformation must be at the forefront of the NHS.
“With 17 Integrated Care Systems placed across the UK, and significant capital to grow, Lantum is well-positioned to continue to deliver solutions that do better by the NHS. For its staff and for its patients.”