Lantum, formerly Network Locum, is an English company based in Shoreditch, London producing a platform and suite of tools for healthcare organisations to find and manage their clinical staff.
Lantum was started by Melissa Morris in 2012. [1] who previously worked at the management consulting firm McKinsey & Company.[2] Morris came up with the idea of Lantum in 2012 when she was working at McKinsey & Company and then at NHS London. She saw how expensive and wasteful the staffing industry was in healthcare[3] and wanted to improve it. Lantum removes manual steps through automation and costs a fraction of a recruitment agency.[4]
The business started out in 2012 as a blog for doctors[5] and named #1 healthtech start up to watch. The business now works across staff types, UK-wide and can be used in any healthcare organisation.
In 2016 Network Locum changed their name to Lantum to reflect their strategy to becoming a software business rather than a labour marketplace.[6] Their investors include Piton Capital, BGF Ventures Samos and Beringea.[7]
In November 2017, Lantum was selected by NHS England to join the NHS Innovation Accelerator, a program which highlights leading technologies within the NHS and helps them scale.[8] It is said to have has saved the NHS £7.7 million and enabled more than 4.2 million GP appointments since 2012.[9] The company claims it could save the NHS £1 billion every year by cutting out traditional recruitment agencies. It has expanded beyond GP practices to 13 hospitals and plans to cover more.[10]
Lantum acquired Leicester-based rLocums in 2016 and popular GP invoicing tool Locum Organiser in 2017 to expand the product offering to its users.[11] In 2018 it had 50 full-time employees.[12]
Morris was named the "third coolest female startup founder in Tech" and one of the "Top 100 coolest people in Tech" by Business Insider in 2017.[13][14] She has been invited to write about the difficulty of technical innovation in the NHS.[15]