AI-Driven Healthcare Recruitment with Healthdaq

About Healthdaq
Healthdaq is an Irish-headquartered healthcare recruitment services company with a strong presence in the UK and a growing presence in Australia, Canada and Ireland.

Unlike traditional recruitment agencies Healthdaq doesn’t place candidates in jobs, instead it provides services to organisations to help them manage their own recruitment and is aligned with the wider HR trends including automation, employer branding and centralised support.

The company is pioneering a subscription-based recruitment model in healthcare, offering unlimited hiring for a fixed fee and anticipates that AI will eliminate the need for recruitment administrators and consultants for permanent hiring within the next three years.

With the global healthcare staffing industry expected to double to $78 billion by 2033, Healthdaq is positioning itself to harness AI to transform healthcare recruitment.

Opportunity
Healthcare faces significant workforce challenges, with the most pressing being access to talent at the right time and cost. Another critical issue is time-to-hire, averaging around 130 days in the National Health Service (NHS). Together, these factors drive substantial expenditure on bank and agency staff of approximately GBP £10 billion in 2022/23.

AI has the potential to reshape the recruitment life cycle, supporting processes from attracting and sourcing candidates to selection and onboarding. In 2023, healthdaq helped a client save GBP £10.2 million on agency staff without the use of AI, highlighting the opportunity for even greater efficiencies through technology.

Initial Engagement
Digital Maturity Assessment

Healthdaq partnered with CeADAR’s European Digital Innovation Hub (EDIH) for AI to conduct a Digital Maturity Assessment. This process identified multiple areas where AI could support Healthdaq’s goals, leading to the creation of an AI roadmap.

Project Selection

From a range of opportunities, Healthdaq and CeADAR selected two AI projects with the greatest potential impact:
1. CV Parsing Solution — to automate candidate profile creation.

2. Candidate Matching — to streamline the pairing of candidates with job opportunities. Candidate Matching could not be achieved before progressing CV Parsing.

Test Before Invest
Challenge 1: CV Parsing
Healthdaq’s platform required candidates to manually input their personal information, education, and work experience to build their profiles. However, only around 10% of candidates (approximately 10,000) completed this step, resulting in an incomplete dataset and a missed opportunity to enhance the database for both job seekers and employers.

Scoping the Solution
Working with CeADAR’s data scientists, Healthdaq outlined the requirements for an AI-powered tool that could parse CVs, automatically extracting relevant data and standardisingit into candidate profiles.  Feasibility tests were conducted to evaluate available technology.

The Solution
CeADAR developed a CV parsing prototype that would allow the Healthdaq portal to:

● Automatically process CVs and populate candidate profiles.

The Healthdaq portal still enables candidates to review and amend their data, maintaining human oversight.

Impact
The CV parsing prototype is currently undergoing testing for production. Its expected benefits include:
● Enhancing the candidate experience.
● Creating more complete and accurate datasets.
● Laying the groundwork for Project 2: Candidate Matching.