AI for NHS procurement professionals: potential solutions in 2025

Against the backdrop of significant cost pressures and the launch of the Government’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) Opportunities Action Plan, NHS procurement professionals may be wondering how AI can enhance strategic procurement activities and improve operational efficiency in early 2025.

Amid the current AI boom, numerous potential AI-related solutions are emerging. However, the focus of this article is limited to a brief selection of AI tools which have the potential to support strategic procurement activities and streamline general administrative tasks within NHS procurement departments and back-office functions. This article covers a select group of AI solution providers we engaged with over a five-month period. Beyond those discussed in this paper, we also held meetings with Akirolabs, DocuSign, and Hudson and Hayes to explore their offerings.

This article will highlight how AI can support specific stages of the procurement cycle, but first points to the potential role of AI assistants and knowledge bots in informing decision making and knowledge management, and supporting general administrative tasks within commercial departments.

As a Microsoft product, Copilot benefits from seamless integration with widely used Microsoft applications like Word and Excel, a user-friendly interface that aligns with familiar Microsoft processes, and a high degree of interoperability with existing systems.

Using Microsoft Copilot for administrative tasks
As an AI assistant powered by large language models (LLMs), Microsoft Copilot integrates with Microsoft 365 applications, helping procurement teams automate administrative tasks and streamline workflows.

• Teams Meetings: Copilot can summarise discussions, highlight key points, and even draw conclusions based on meeting content
• Outlook emails: The ‘Draft with Copilot’ feature helps teams to draft emails based on brief descriptions, saving time spent on routine communication. Additionally, the ‘Summary by Copilot’ feature condenses lengthy email threads, allowing users to immediately focus on the key details
• Excel automation: Copilot can assist by suggesting relevant formulas, explaining existing ones, and generating PivotTables, charts, and graphs. It can also identify duplicate entries and highlight empty cells, improving data accuracy
• PowerPoint presentations: By using a source document and headline topics, Copilot can generate an initial presentation draft, which users can then refine as needed. This feature significantly reduces the time spent creating presentations.

AI for training, development, and compliance
NHS North of England Commercial Procurement Collaborative (NOE CPC) has developed a regulation compliance chatbot for internal training on the Procurement Act 2023. Unlike generic AI models that rely on internet-based data, this proprietary LLM ensures data security by preventing external training on confidential information. The tool allows procurement teams to continuously refine and improve training materials while maintaining strict confidentiality standards. This principle could be applied to any large document suite to
assist with training or enable rapid and accurate interrogation.

Using AI for the procurement cycle
Beyond administrative support, AI solutions can enhance various stages of the procurement process, from market analysis to SRM and supplier contract management.

Market options
At the market options stage, procurement teams assess the external environment before deciding on an appropriate route to market. AI-powered tools can accelerate this process:

• NOE CPC’s Strategic Market Analysis Tool: This LLM-based tool processes targeted user prompts to generate market summaries using publicly available data. Procurement professionals, even those without prior expertise in a given sector, can gain insights into market competition, key players, barriers to entry, and potential risks.

Strategy development
Once a project team begins developing a procurement strategy, AI-driven project management tools can enhance efficiency:

• Ecovate’s Dotted Line Platform: Featuring an integrated Gantt chart, this tool allows procurement teams to manage responsibilities across multiple projects, set task dependencies, and track accountability. It also generates automated project summaries, saving time on stakeholder updates.

Documentation development
• Microsoft Copilot for Word: This tool can assist in drafting key procurement documents such as Requests for Information (RFIs). By providing background details, procurement teams can use Copilot to create initial drafts that can be further refined
• Ecovate’s Automated Evaluation Question Generator: This tool can streamline the creation of evaluation questions and corresponding assessment matrices, reducing the amount of manual effort required.

Tender evaluation
AI solutions can accelerate the evaluation of supplier submissions, improving objectivity and efficiency:

• Ecovate’s Dotted Line Platform: Automatically generates evaluation matrices in minutes and consolidates individual assessments into a moderation matrix, streamlining the scoring process
• NOE CPC’s Evaluation Support Agent: Assesses supplier submissions against scoring methodologies, providing an unbiased evaluation to help procurement teams identify potential oversights or biases
• BiP Solutions’ AI Detect: Analyses supplier documents for AI-generated content. As AI-assisted responses become more sophisticated, this tool ensures transparency by flagging submissions with high AI involvement.

Contract award and implementation 
• Legalfly’s AI-Supported Contract Review Tool: Helps procurement teams review contract terms, identify potential legal imbalances, and translate complex legal clauses into plain English. The tool assigns risk ratings to contract conditions, allowing procurement teams to modify clauses as necessary.

SRM and Supplier Contract Management
• NOE CPC’s Supplier Viability Assessment Tool: Uses AI to analyse publicly available financial records and news articles to assess supplier risk profiles.

Conclusion
AI-powered solutions can enhance NHS procurement by automating administrative tasks, supporting compliance training, and improving efficiency at various stages of the procurement cycle. From AI assistants like Microsoft Copilot to advanced evaluation and contract management tools, AI has the potential to drive operational efficiencies and strengthen strategic decision-making across NHS procurement departments. Additionally, AI can play a crucial role in supporting data analytics, helping procurement teams uncover insights, identify trends, and optimise spending strategies.

For a full copy of the NHS LPP paper, ‘AI for NHS Procurement Professionals: Potential Solutions and Risks in 2025,’ which this article is based on, please contact hugo.dragonetti@lpp.nhs.uk.