Imagine you're a nurse on the front lines of healthcare, and you need to check your budget to see if you can afford new supplies. But instead of quickly pulling up an easy-to-read report with a traffic light system, you must scroll through pages and pages on a spreadsheet. How long does that take? How much time is eaten up by administrative duties, leaving less time for patient care?

This is a common scenario in hospitals around the world. Healthcare is notoriously complex, siloed, and inefficient. Many providers are still using paper, or even counting medical supplies by hand. My organization, NEP, is trying to change some of that.

In England, the National Health Service (NHS) oversees and distributes funds for public healthcare across the country. The NHS is operated by a network of more than 200 "trusts" (essentially public-sector corporations) responsible for providing healthcare to local populations.

That's where we come in. NEP is a not-for-profit consortium that provides technology solutions to 32 NHS legal entities/organisations and 68 business units. Rather than have every hospital or care facility run its own back-office spreadsheets, purchase orders and paper, NEP provides modern technology to help our clients manage administrative functions like finance and procurement. Our shared platform model takes much of the back-office burden off the shoulders of trusts and providers, giving them easy-to-use software to manage budgets, planning, procurement and more.

In healthcare, every penny counts. Costs go up every year, and the COVID-19 crisis added 35 percent to the NHS's most recent budget. Finding savings and efficiencies in finance, especially in procurement (which represents 60 percent of NHS spend), can keep costs under control and help each of our clients be more efficient. Our goal is bringing more value to the NHS so that staff can devote more time and funds to patient care.