How AI Can Transform Recruiting in the Healthcare Sector
The UK's health and social care system is stretched. Cera estimates around 110,000 social care vacancies, and official projections suggest the NHS could face up to 360,000 staffing gaps by 2036. Traditional recruitment-slow screens, heavy admin, missed candidates-can't keep pace with demand. That's the context for Ami, Cera's AI recruitment agent now being licensed across health and care.
For healthcare leaders, the question isn't "Is AI coming?" It's "How do we use it to fix real problems without adding risk?"
Meet Ami: an interview-ready AI built for scale
Cera's Ami conducts first-stage interviews, assessing eligibility, attitude, and experience. If a candidate is a fit, it instantly books a second interview with a human recruiter. No waiting. No phone tag. Just momentum.
According to Cera, the impact inside its own operations has been clear: screening costs down by two-thirds, recruiters saving roughly two days a week, and the time from application to first interview dropping from days to seconds. For the same marketing spend, Cera says it now issues twice as many offers.
As Dr Ben Maruthappu, CEO and Founder of Cera, puts it: "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."
Candidate experience: fast, human, and on-demand
Cera reports a 99% satisfaction rate from applicants interacting with Ami, and fewer than 1% ask to switch to a human at the first touchpoint. Research cited by the company suggests 73% of candidates want contact the moment they apply-the exact moment Ami engages. It's speed without losing the human feel.
Governance and safety: build trust first
Cera says Ami is built to meet Care Quality Commission requirements and is ready for sector-wide deployment. If you're exploring AI for recruitment, anchor your rollout to established standards such as the CQC's expectations for safe recruitment and "fit and proper persons." See guidance here: CQC Regulation 19.
Practical guardrails to put in place before you scale:
- Human in the loop for final decisions and complex cases.
- Bias testing across demographic groups, with regular audits and documented outcomes.
- Clear escalation paths so candidates can speak to a person at any point.
- Accessible interview experiences (language, disability support, device compatibility).
- Data protection impact assessment, secure data retention, and explicit candidate consent.
- Transparent candidate messaging on how AI is used and how decisions are made.
Where this helps right now
- High-volume roles in domiciliary care and care homes where application volume overwhelms teams.
- Seasonal surges and winter pressures requiring rapid screening and scheduling.
- Bank and agency conversion, moving qualified candidates through faster with fewer drop-offs.
- Standardised eligibility checks that reduce manual errors and delays.
What deployment can look like
- Connect Ami (or any AI agent) to your ATS so interviews and notes sync automatically.
- Define clear eligibility criteria and must-haves for each role; keep them simple and auditable.
- Give the AI structured prompts and example decisions from your best recruiters.
- Set KPIs: time-to-first-contact, time-to-interview, offer rate, cost per hire, candidate satisfaction.
- Run a 4-6 week pilot on one role and one region; compare outcomes to your baseline.
- Train recruiters to use AI outputs as signals, not verdicts.
- Publish a candidate FAQ that explains the process and how to request a human.
Sector-wide potential-and beyond
After its internal results, Cera is licensing Ami to other providers to address staffing gaps across the NHS and social care. The company says the tech can be adapted for large frontline teams in sectors like hospitality, retail, manufacturing, and construction.
Martin Hao, CEO of Ami AI, says: "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." He adds that it's built to act as an assistant alongside staff, not as a replacement.
Why this matters for healthcare leaders
The hiring bottleneck is now a care delivery problem. If you can reduce screening time from days to seconds and keep satisfaction high, your services become more resilient. For a system under pressure, that's more than an efficiency gain-it's access, continuity, and safer staffing.
For context on the long-term workforce gap, see official projections in the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan: NHS workforce projections.
Upskill your team to move faster
If your HR and ops teams need a quick ramp on practical AI skills for hiring and workforce planning, explore hands-on options here: AI courses by job role. A bit of targeted training can speed up safe adoption and reduce change friction.
Ami won't fix workforce planning on its own. But if the reported gains hold across the sector-lower cost, faster throughput, better candidate experience-AI-led screening can become a reliable part of your staffing toolkit.
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