Meet Melissa Morris, CEO and Founder at NHS Workforce Solution: Lantum

Lantum is a platform tackling healthcare’s most painful and expensive problem – workforce management.

Right now, £4bn is being spent on recruitment agencies in the NHS alone and staff are leaving the profession faster than they are joining. In January, there were more than 93,000 vacancies, a figure which is rising.

Lantum is solving this, providing a powerful workforce scheduling platform which for the first time gives clinicians control over their working patterns. We also connect organisations to a large pool of flexible workers who can fill vacancies – uniting healthcare organisations with the workforce like never before.

We are a team of 85 mission-driven people working hard to solve these problems globally in collaboration with our clients, who are healthcare organisations and professions.
 
 

 

How did you come up with the idea for the company?

 
I was previously a management consultant at Mckinsey & Co, where we were exploring ways to improve healthcare systems. It was here that I saw first hand the costs that poor workforce management processes burdened the healthcare system with.

My brother is also an NHS doctor and I just felt compelled to solve the problem. I left Mckinsey and joined NHS London in 2010. There, I deepened my understanding of the issue, realising that the way to solve this was through technology and so in 2012, I founded Lantum and embarked on my journey as an entrepreneur.
 

How has the company evolved during the pandemic?

 
As a team specialising in tech, we were able to adapt our software during Covid to support those who needed it.

For example, we introduced new functionality co-designed with NHS England, enabling GP practices to indicate whether they had sufficient PPE equipment or whether clinicians were likely to be seeing infected patients.

We also supported the vaccination effort, setting up more than 150 sites across the country where staff could be scheduled to perform vaccinations. We onboarded 14,000 new staff to the platform in the process.

Overall, the pandemic drove significant demand for Lantum, from Urgent Care providers to hospital departments to telehealth providers. Many places were looking to upgrade their scheduling processes because they needed to better communicate with staff remotely. It has certainly changed the way healthcare organisations use technology forever.
 

What can we hope to see from Lantum in the future?

 
Our plan is to expand globally – we have seen the same problems in various countries around the world and we want to help.

We are also hiring across the board, with a plan to get to 120 people by the summer.

One of our key goals is to save the NHS £1 billion, so we will continue working towards this through our ongoing development of state-of-the-art technology.

And as ever, we want to keep developing our product to continue to improve how the NHS’ workforce is scheduled and connected with.