The medical start-up helping the NHS fill staff vacancies during coronavirus

Patchwork Health helps hospitals reduce their reliance on expensive employment agencies, reports Hazel Sheffield

The team at Patchwork, a platform that fills staff vacancies within the NHS (Patchwork)

Anas Nader and Jing Ouyang were working as junior doctors when they imagined a platform that would connect vacant shifts with healthcare workers, reducing the need for agencies that were crippling the NHS with high fees.

Even before coronavirus, the NHS was spending an increasing amount of money on agency staff to fill vacancies.

In 2018, three leading healthcare think tanks said that staff shortages in the NHS had become a bigger threat to the future of the service than lack of funding. A briefing by the King’s Fund, the Health Foundation and the Nuffield Trust argued that there was a shortage of more than 100,000 staff across NHS Trusts, expected to reach 300,000 by 2050.