Mark Cubbon, Chief Executive, Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust (MFT) (Credit: MFT)
The University of Manchester NHS Foundation Trust has announced that it will expand the use of AI tools across its workforce.
Over the past 18 months, the trust has been working with Microsoft to explore how AI can support staff in their daily work.
This includes deploying Dragon Copilot ambient voice technology (AVT) to hundreds of clinicians and providing approximately 1,500 Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses to staff.
The next phase will be to increase the number of staff with access to Copilot and establish an ‘agent factory’ within the trust. This enables teams to design and implement AI tools to automate routine operational tasks across services.
Mark Cubbon, Chief Executive of Manchester University NHS FT, said: “Across the NHS, we are all thinking about how technology can support our workforce and enable us to run our services more effectively. For an organization of our size and scale, this opportunity is significant.”
“Our collaboration with Microsoft is about using AI to improve the way we work: streamlining administrative processes, reducing the potential for human error in some high-volume tasks, and reinvesting time and resources to support direct patient care.
“Agentic AI is a key part of this next phase, and our early HR pilots suggest that these tools can cut the time it takes to perform some administrative tasks by up to half.
“The most important thing is to implement the tool responsibly, with appropriate safeguards in place and clinicians and staff closely involved in how the tool is used.”
As part of the enterprise agreement over the next three years, the University of Manchester NHS FT will acquire an additional 6,500 Microsoft Copilot licenses each year, which will be accessible to all enterprise staff and around 1,600 frontline staff.
Teams can also deploy “human-involved” protection to build and deploy AI agents to support processes across areas such as administration, finance, and information governance.
In addition to supporting elements of the hiring process, AI agents are already supporting finance teams with predictions and helping respond to common HR questions from staff.
The University of Manchester NHS FT is also investing in training and development to ensure staff are confident in using AI-enabled tools and deploy them responsibly.
Darren Hardman, CEO of Microsoft UK & Ireland, said: “The impact Manchester University NHS FT has had from M365 Copilot and Dragon Copilot shows what is possible when AI is put into the hands of busy healthcare teams. This is AI that gives back time.”
“By widening access and establishing the Agent Factory, Manchester University NHS FT is responsibly extending these benefits across the Trust, enabling more colleagues to streamline their routine work and focus on what matters most to patients.”
Meanwhile, there was talk in the digital health community that NHS England was moving towards a national deal with Microsoft to roll out AVT.
However, there is no confirmation, and a Microsoft spokesperson said: Digital health news Earlier this month, that rumor turned out to be inaccurate.
