Lantum co-founder - and recipient of the ‘Asian Tech Pioneer’ award - GP Dr Ishani Patel has been recognised for her role in creating disruptive, game-changing technology, overcoming barriers of inclusion and accessibility in the wider tech industry in the process. As co-founder of Lantum - the UK’s largest digital staffing platform for healthcare workers – Ishani has helped transform rota scheduling and payment processes for the more than 5,000 UK healthcare organisations (and one in two doctors’ clinics in England) which use the platform. The company has achieved a 50/50 gender split across all levels and actively prioritises D&I at all stages of the hiring process.
Dr Patel spoke to Asian Voice about her work, inclusivity in diversity and the current healthcare crisis.
How does Lantum help healthcare workers?
Lantum is a tech platform tackling the healthcare sector's biggest problem – the workforce. The NHS faces a staffing crisis, annually spending more than £4bn on temporary recruitment – employees are facing severe burnout, with more clinicians leaving the workforce than joining. There are 93,000 vacancies and little sign of bold plans from the government to address this.
Lantum has built a powerful workforce scheduling platform helping clinicians take charge of their work life and schedules. It is also connected to rich hyper-local networks of available clinicians who can fill vacancies when needed, uniting healthcare organisations with the workforce like never before. Through features like ‘Rocketpay’, which enables doctors to be paid the next day for their shifts and is now free for all users, Lantum allows clinicians to focus their efforts on patient care without having to spend time chasing for payment, a process which otherwise can take several months.
How does one attract and retain diverse talent while being inclusive?
The most important thing is to prioritise diversity and inclusion considerations at all stages of the hiring process. We’re proud of reaching a 50/50 gender split among our staff, which we achieved by identifying areas in our organisation where women were underrepresented and taking active steps to redress this when advertising vacancies.
It’s also important to ensure staff feel supported and secure in their positions, which is why we took several steps to help our people through the cost-of-living crisis. We provide lunch and cover commuting costs when our employees work from the office and introduced a 2% blanket pay rise to cover the 1.25% increase in national insurance payments in April. Additionally, we have a bi-annual remuneration committee, which reviews all employees for a potential pay rise twice annually.
Could you tell us a bit about the GP shortage crisis? What’s the underlying issue and what is the solution?
The retention rate among NHS staff is disastrous – one in nine (11%) left active service in the year to September 2021. GPs are leaving their positions at such a rate that it is estimated that one-quarter of posts will be empty within a decade.
One of the major reasons behind staff leaving is the lack of work-life balance and control over schedules. Invariably, staff are unable to plan their personal lives as they wait for rotas to be published. Often, time off is only granted if they can convince a colleague to swap shifts with them – which is exceptionally hard to do when many are working hours well over the contractual or recommended limits.
With an ever-growing backlog of patients from the pandemic, GPs are overstretched and overworked – subsequently, many feel burnt out and choose to leave. The immediate solution to GP shortages is to make better use of existing capacity within the system – and the quickest way to implement these changes is through technology and tooling.
How can tech help in navigating staffing issues?
Tech holds the key to helping the NHS make the best use of the capacity already in the system. If we can get more clinicians working across organisational boundaries – as more than 3,000 do via Lantum – and working flexibly, we free up additional capacity to contribute to the system which may otherwise not be available.
With the help of platforms like Lantum, we are seeing GPs starting to work more fluidly and sharing their time across the system – we currently have more than 31,000 clinicians on our platform. However, this practice needs to be rolled out to other staff beyond primary care for the NHS to make real progress on its crippling staff retention crisis.
If modern technologies are embraced effectively, processes will become simpler, more cost-effective and reduce staff workload by enabling them to focus on patient health rather than rota spreadsheets. In turn, this will improve satisfaction and – ultimately - retention rates.
What does it take to climb the ladder as a woman in science and technology?
It takes leadership, perseverance and total commitment to a vision to navigate and climb the STEM ladder. Beyond this, I believe a key component to Lantum’s success – and that of other health tech companies defying the downturn elsewhere in the tech industry - has been identifying real-life inefficiencies and challenges in healthcare systems and developing solutions which significantly improve the quality of patient care. As we move forwards, both healthcare organisations and tech companies will be increasingly conscious of the need to increase diversity in their leadership teams, which bodes well for future opportunities for women seeking senior roles in these industries.
