In our latest #OurEntrepreneurs profile we meet cohort 8 Clinical Entrepreneur Ahmed Shahrabani, NHS Doctor & Locum’s Nest Co-Founder.
Tell us a bit about yourself
I am an NHS Clinician practising across University College London Hospital & Camden & Islington NHSFT in the North Central London Integrated Care System. Having re-entered clinical practise in March 2020 to support the system working as the Covid SHO on-call out-of-hours, I now practise medicine across North Central London via Camden & Islington NHSFT. Holding degrees in Medicine from Sheffield University with a Post-Graduate Certification in Global Health & Epidemiology from Kings College London.
Name: Ahmed Shahrabani.
Occupation: NHS Doctor & Locum’s Nest Co-Founder.
Location: North Central London ICB.
Outside of Medicine and Locum’s Nest, I am a semi-professional race car driver racing British historics in a national championship. I am also a college mentor at Oxford University and a regular public speaker for all things workforce and innovation.
Tell us about your innovation
Locum’s Nest is a market-leading technology platform that is transforming the way healthcare organisations connect with qualified and available bank and agency healthcare professionals. Locum’s Nest empowers organisations to efficiently fill temporary staffing gaps, ensuring uninterrupted patient care using state-of-the-art web and mobile apps. With a user-friendly interface and an extensive network of healthcare professionals, Locum’s Nest enables organisations to streamline their staffing processes, boost operational efficiency, generate cost savings, and ultimately deliver better healthcare outcomes for their patients. Working with over 50 NHS Trusts and over 60,000 clinicians, it has helped the NHS realise over £750m in cost-avoidance since its inception.
The NHS spent more than £10bn on temporary staffing in 2022/23 yet despite this, flexible working within the NHS remains largely inefficient and therefore requires innovation and attention to address several key issues that are becoming more prevalent. Flexible working is crucial for enhancing workforce wellbeing, enabling additional pathways to gain clinical experience & knowledge, promoting a healthier work-life balance, and mitigating burnout. By fostering a supportive environment, innovation in flexible working can attract and retain talent, vital for sustaining the NHS economically. Improved staff satisfaction correlates with enhanced patient care and outcomes, with more and more evidence directly showing the correlation between NHS Trusts that have empowered clinicians to work flexibly and improved patient outcomes. Embracing novel approaches to flexibility not only revitalizes the NHS workforce but also ensures its long-term viability, underscoring the urgent need for transformative changes in how work is structured and managed.
Why did you apply to join the programme, and what are you most looking forward to?
I applied to the Clinical Entrepreneur Programme to connect with fellow clinicians who share my passion for innovation. I am keen to work with the programme and its community to further amplify our partnerships across the sector, advancing our reach across the NHS and deepening our engagement with national programmes. I am most looking forward to the PitStop educational events around the country to meet fellow entrepreneurs on the programme, learn from others and share some lessons I’ve learnt during my journey. I am hoping the programme will support me via mentorship and the shared learnings I will gain from meeting and engaging with my peers throughout the course of the year.
What are your ambitions for the next year?
The team and I have managed to scale our innovation to a great place over the past 8 years, for 2024, I am hoping to be able to deploy our innovation across several additional ICBs that we’re currently in discussions with and deploy some of our R&D projects that have remained in stealth mode to-date – I really believe they’ll help revolutionise the status quo and drive large-scale change.
Why do you think innovation is important in healthcare?
Healthcare in its nature is fast-changing and always has been. Clinicians dedicate their lives for their patients, and I truly believe it’s our role as clinician innovators to help drive change from within, we are fortunate enough to be part of the system that we can change and so it’s our duty to make things better. The NHS is respected across the world as a global leader in healthcare, its coming under more and more financial and operational pressures and so it’s our duty to innovate to help from within, solve these inefficiencies and shift the focus away from the negatives and back to the reasons why we all wanted to be part of it in the first place.
How can we find out more?
We have lots of information about Locums Nest on our website http://www.locumsnest.co.uk and I’m always more than happy to be reached directly on LinkedIn or via email on ahmed@locumsnest.co.uk