Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust’s Journey to Scalable Automation

Published On: May 7, 2025|

Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust (LTHT) faced increasing administrative workloads in both clinical and non-clinical areas. Before implementing automation to tackle these challenges, staff were spending a significant amount of time on repetitive, manual tasks, which diverted them from patient-focused activities. Many processes were labour-intensive, and required staff to deal with disconnected systems, which led to inefficiencies and risked delays in patient pathways. The Trust was under pressure to find innovative ways to address growing service demands and workforce challenges without increasing headcount, especially given budget constraints.

In March 2023, LTHT appointed e18 Innovation as the Trust’s strategic automation partner to help maximise the value of their existing Blue Prism Cloud investment. By working in close partnership with the e18 team, LTHT has been able to scale automation across the organisation, expand their in-house team, and align their automation programme to local, regional and national strategic objectives. As a result of this collaboration, the Trust has deployed 101 live automations across 19 different departments, scaling their platform from 5 to 19 ‘Digital Workers’ in the process. LTHT’s key areas of focus include the automation of referral management, cancer pathways, finance processes, and more recently – Clinical Coding. The automation of Clinical Coding represents a significant achievement, as this process alone has generated c£10m of net new income in just a few months since go-live.

Deliver Upon Strategic Objectives

Enhanced Patient Pathways

Improved Staff Satisfaction

Better Data Quality and Safety

Enhance Candidate Experience

Increased Collaboration

Improve Compliance

Effective Workforce Utilisation

Rob Child – Automation Programme Lead

“e18 brought momentum to our automation programme. Before, it was piecemeal. Now it’s a fully scaled programme that’s embedded across departments.”

What’s Next?

The Trust has developed a five-year automation strategy in conjunction with e18 to ensure sustainable programme growth. Over the next phase of the programme, LTHT plans to continue using automation as a tool to enable financial savings and realise increasingly transformative change. The next phase will also see LTHT explore Agentic AI and other Intelligent Automation tools to unlock adaptive automation across care and operational pathways.

Rob Child – Automation Programme Lead

“Using automation in collaboration with our income team has allowed us to bring about tangible financial gains, which are crucial given the waste reduction targets all NHS Trusts face.”

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