Will AI Transform the Future of Recruiting in Healthcare?

The UK’s health and social care sector is facing unprecedented staffing pressures. Social care alone has around 110,000 vacancies, according to healthcare company Cera, while NHS workforce projections suggest potential shortages of up to 360,000 roles by 2036. 

Traditional recruitment systems, which are often slow, resource-heavy and reliant on manual screening, are no longer able to keep pace.

As the sector searches for scalable and efficient hiring solutions, one of the UK’s largest home healthcare providers, Cera believes AI could hold the answer.

Turning its attention to recruitment, the firm has developed Ami, an AI recruitment agent which is now being licensed across the health and care sectors.

Cera says that Ami conducts warm, human-like interviews with applicants, screening them for eligibility and rating them across qualities such as attitude and experience. Suitable candidates are then booked instantly for a second interview with a human recruiter. 

Ami can interview hundreds of thousands of applicants at the same time, something no human team could match.

Using AI to speed up hiring

Since deploying Ami within its own workforce, Cera has seen significant improvements in recruitment efficiency. Screening costs have been reduced by two-thirds, and human recruiters using Ami save around two days of work each week. 

The time from application to first interview has dropped from days to seconds, and Cera now makes twice as many job offers for the same recruitment marketing spend.

As CEO and Founder Dr Ben Maruthappu says: “Ami transforms this challenging process, taking the time from application to first interview down from days to seconds, and significantly reducing costs, freeing up valuable human time.”

He adds it’s a strong example of how “AI can revolutionise health and care”.

Cera says Ami holds a 99% candidate satisfaction rate, with fewer than 1% of applicants requesting to speak instead to a human recruiter. 

Research suggests 73% of candidates prefer contact at the moment they apply and this is what Ami provides applicants with.

Scaling solutions for a national workforce crisis

Given the success Ami has delivered at Cera, the company is now licensing the technology to other health and care organisations to help address urgent staff shortages, from NHS winter pressures to long-term workforce gaps. 

Designed to meet Care Quality Commission requirements, Cera says Ami is ready to be deployed across the sector.

Martin Hao, CEO of Ami AI, emphasises the system’s adaptability: “In a world full of off-the-shelf AIs, Ami’s complex architecture, drawing on multiple AI models, makes it extraordinarily reactive, human-like and warm, and we’ve seen it swiftly builds an exceptional rapport with candidates." 

Although built for care, Ami can also be tailored for large-scale frontline workforces in sectors such as hospitality, retail, manufacturing and construction, with interest already emerging from major employers globally.

Ami’s CEO says that it’s designed to be onboarded as an actual employee, not as a tech platform, assisting staff, not replacing humans.

By cutting costs, accelerating hiring, improving candidate confidence, and expanding the pool of available talent, Ami demonstrates how AI hiring can transform multiple industries.