Digital health staff will be expected to gain professional registration
- 26 March 2026
- Digital healthcare professionals in England will be expected to be registered with the Federation for Informatics Professionals
- Expectation will initially apply to senior staff
- A formal announcement from NHS England is expected in the coming days
NHS England is to set an “expectation” that staff working in digital healthcare are members of a professional body and registered as digital professionals.
Speaking at the Digital Health Rewired conference, Martin Dennys, deputy director for the digital profession at NHS England, said that a formal announcement was expected to be made within the next few days.
He added that the move is designed “to bring us as a profession, and the activity we do, in line with our clinical colleagues, but also with finance people, knowledge management and other areas that already have a mandate or an expectation set around being professional members”.
Professionalisation of the healthcare digital, data and technology (DDaT) workforce has become an increasingly hot topic as its activities have become ever more central to the delivery of care.
Initially NHSE’s expectation will only apply to senior members of staff, defined in this context as being those at band 7 or above.
Dennys said the expectation would then be extended “in a phased manner” for lower bands.
They will be expected to join one of the five professional bodies that make up the Federation for Informatics Professionals (FEDIP) within the next 12 months, and to take the additional step of becoming FEDIP registered.
“This is not about being part of a professional body for the sake of it.
“It is a commitment to professional standards, to continuing professional development, to ethics, and to our way of working and supporting clinical colleagues and the operational service in what we do,” Dennys said.
The five constituent bodies are: the Association of Professional Healthcare Analysts (AphA); British Computer Society (BCS) – the Chartered Institute for IT; CHIME; CILIP: The Library and Information Association; Institute of Health Records and Information Management (IHRIM); and the Society for Innovation Technology and Modernisation (Socitm).
Professionals will be expected to pay their own membership fees, but Dennys stressed that NHSE had worked with the professional bodies to negotiate a reduced rate for those at lower bands.
Will Smart, chair of the BCS health and care faculty, said: “The professionals we are initially registering are all people who are senior and doing the job, so there will be no requirement on day one for people to take exams. We will credit real world experience.”
Registration with the FEDIP requires an individual to sign up to a code of conduct, demonstrate that they have the skills expected of a digital professional, and to commit to 10 hours of continuing professional development each year.
Andrew Griffiths, chief executive at the FEDIP, said that the new expectation makes it clear that digital professionals are “vital to the running of the NHS”.
“We want to be professionals, we want to demonstrate that, we want to get treated like professionals, we want parity of esteem around the board table when discussions are happening,” Griffiths added.
7 Comments
I think it would be helpful if our existing professional registration bodies (NMC, GMC, and the body for AHPs) recognise digital as a career pathway within their registered professionals, and that FedIP recognise these registered professionals as Digital Health practitioners. This would be preferred for those staff already registered to practice with a professional body than having to add a second registration. This could help professionalise Digital as a valuable and valid healthcare practitioner career pathway too.
So, for example, if I’m a specialist nurse working with complex cardiac patients, implants etc, I am not required to register with a separate ‘cardiac’ body. But if I’m a nurse working in digital, I am expected to? I’ve worked in clinical informatics for 15+ years and easily manage to keep my skills and qualifications relevant through numerous means. I’m not sure you can announce/enforce this without consultation with professional bodies such as NMC, GMC etc and also unions. This just seems like an unnecessary additional cost to those struggling with the cost of living. It also feels like an attempt at creating an elitist group of people who somehow think that what they are doing is any different to someone working in a specialist role. I get the sentiment regarding ‘professionalisation of the role’, but it shouldn’t be an expectation or enforced.
This is fabulous news. Decades of effort to persuade professional bodies to work together to create the infrastructure required for a TRUE profession for DDAT staff is now nearing fruition.
Our Public rightly expect their doctors, nurses and other care professionals to be professionally registered and accountable
Our Public rightly expect those charged with spending their taxes to be professionally registered and accountable
Our Public has ever right to expect those managing their data, delivering systems to support their care, overseeing critical infrastructure & protecting all from cyber threats to have the same level of professional registration and accountability.
Moreover, this DDAT workforce deserves the parity of esteem, respect and professional courtesy afforded to the NHS staff with long established professional registration, including time assigned specifically for Continuing Professional Education
On fees – Get over yourselves, you do not hear the other professionals bleating about the costs because they understand to be a true professional takes a willingness to invest in oneself. The fees are being designed to match grades and will be phased in over years.
When doctors, nurses, AHPs, accountants, lawyers etc decided to professionalise tens or hundreds of years ago they set out on a course that gave themselves a status in society, a key role as a person the public could trust to do the job well because they had the education and professional standards. We are at the beginning of this journey for DDAT and I think it is brilliant!!
The Alliance for Data Science Professionals already exists and consists of well respected professional bodies across the UK. I do not see the need for the Federation for Informatics Professional when AFDSP exists.
https://afdsp.co.uk
The Alliance for Data Science Professionals is not a natural home for many digital and data staff in the NHS such as the clinical coders and records management staff, analysts and data engineers who do not rely primarily on data science skills, clinical informaticians outside of research roles ( chief nursing information officers for example) and is moreover wholly inapplicable for all the digital staff on second and third line support, looking after computer hardware and networks and the digital education staff who are key to implementing and optimising EPR system. The range of digital, data and technical roles within the NHS is remarkable for its breadth and its virtual invisibility considering how increasingly essential excellent performance in these areas is for delivering the modern NHS. Good to see professionalisation in these roles coming.
With cost of living in the UK on the rise (energy bills, petrol prices, water bills, council tax all having increased over the last 12 months), is this requirement of having to register with a professional body and pay an annual / regular registration fee, in order to do your job, not another tax on people who are already struggling to support their families? Forgive me, but i see little end gain, other than creating a hierarchy of people who can afford to purchase registration, or pass exams, at the top, and people who struggle to afford to pay registration or pass exams, somehow relegated and written off, or managed out of the service.
Will those of us that are already members of a medical Progessional Body (e.g. GPhC, GMC, NMC) be exempt from this requirement? As we already pay fees, are held to a COC and do CPD.
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