Thousands of work hours are being put to better use thanks to NHS staff using Microsoft Teams to communicate with colleagues, rather than holding in-person meetings.

NHS Digital rolled the software out nationally to 1.3 million users across the NHS in March, and it has been used to replace 14.5 million phone calls, and hosted more than 32 million virtual meetings in the space of six months.

The Digital Workplace team from Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust studied the efficiency of using Teams and found that on average a staff member would save one minute by using the software instead of a phone each time they called a colleague and five minutes every time they replaced an in-person meeting with a virtual one.

It is estimated that using Teams freed up more than 2.9 million hours for NHS workers across the country in the six months from April to September.

Pushpak Nayak, Associate Director of ICT Operations at Imperial College NHS Trust. said: “When joining a Teams meeting there’s no need to spend time checking if a meeting room is available and no need to leave your work area to get to the meeting room. In many cases the time saving would be much greater than five minutes, especially if the meeting is being held at another hospital site. With Teams calls, time is saved by knowing someone is available to take your call and not having to find their number.”