When a cardiologist says an AI tool gives him enough time to see an extra patient each morning, it’s worth paying attention.
That is one of the findings coming out of Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust, which signed a three-year deal with Microsoft to roll out Microsoft 365 Copilot to 8,000 staff across its ten Greater Manchester hospitals, covering all corporate staff and roughly 1,600 frontline workers.
The trust is also setting up what it calls an Agent Factory: an internal team that will build and run its own AI automation tools, rather than relying on off-the-shelf products.
Want to know more about how the NHS is using Microsoft Copilot? Read our coverage of the 2025 NHS-wide Copilot trial.
How Microsoft 365 Copilot is being used across the trust
The rollout targets back-office functions first. AI agents already handle routine HR queries, support parts of recruitment, and assist finance teams with forecasting. Early pilots suggest some of those tasks now take half as long.
MFT CEO Mark Cubbon said:
“Our collaboration with Microsoft is about using AI to improve the way we work, streamlining administrative processes, reducing the potential for human error in some high-volume tasks, and reinvesting time and resources to support direct patient care.”
What the Agent Factory means for other organisations
Rather than buying ready-made tools, MFT is building the capability to create its own agents for specific tasks across administration, finance and information governance. Human sign-off is required before any automated process completes.
For IT leaders elsewhere, this is the part of the announcement that deserves attention. Microsoft has been accelerating its agentic AI push across M365 and the organisations moving quickest are building internal development capability rather than waiting for vendors to ship something that fits. If your organisation is still evaluating, MFT is already three years into a delivery plan.
The clinical case: What Dragon Copilot showed
Before this expansion, MFT spent 18 months running Dragon Copilot with hundreds of clinicians. The tool records consultations and writes up clinical notes automatically. Clinicians said it let them “concentrate on the interaction itself rather than the notes, improving the quality of consultations,” backed up by a Microsoft-commissioned survey which found 40% of patients felt their clinician was too focused on a screen during appointments.
Dr Charles Pearman, a cardiologist at MFT, said he saves three to five minutes per patient using Dragon Copilot.
“That doesn’t sound like very much, but by the time you add that up over eight consults in a morning, maybe it might give you enough time to fit in an extra patient.”
That kind of time saving is not unique to MFT. A 2025 trial across 90 NHS organisations found staff saved 43 minutes a day on average, which the government put at 400,000 hours of staff time per month across the health service.
Licences are the easy part
MFT is running a training programme alongside the rollout. Cubbon said:
“What matters most is introducing the tools responsibly, with the right safeguards in place, and with clinicians and staff closely involved in how they are used.”
That reflects a real problem. The University of Manchester found the same thing when it gave Copilot to all 65,000 staff and students: structured training was what drove genuine use. Handing out licences on its own did not.
The Agent Factory faces a similar test. The tools MFT builds will only deliver if staff actually trust and use them. That is harder to measure than licence numbers, and it is where most large deployments run into trouble.
As Darren Hardman, CEO of Microsoft UK & Ireland, put it:
“The impact that MFT has already seen from M365 Copilot and Dragon Copilot shows what’s possible when AI is put in the hands of busy healthcare teams. This is AI that gives time back.”
