NHS to issue half a million Copilot licenses to ease paperwork burden

NHS England is expanding a Microsoft Copilot pilot to 505,000 clinicians and support staff by October 2026, following a trial that claimed the AI assistant saved users 43 minutes a day on administrative tasks. The rollout will start with roughly 2,000 licenses per trust and covers discharge paperwork, bed management, rota planning, meeting minutes, and HR or finance tasks. NHS organizations will also receive Copilot Studio to build custom AI agents for handling complaints, Freedom of Information requests, and helpdesk workloads, overseen by a governance framework called Agent 365. The health service has not disclosed the cost, though public pricing suggests a list-price value well into nine figures annually.