What is Healthcare Science?

Healthcare Science describes the branch of the NHS staff that use technology and science to help patients by prevention, diagnosis and treatment of a large number of clinical conditions.

NHS Scotland's Healthcare Science workforce spans more than fifty specialties which can be broadly categorised within the following four divisions:

• Bioinformatics
• Life Sciences
• Physical Sciences and Biomedical Engineering
• Physiological Sciences

We are the 4th largest group of NHS staff with approximately 6000 healthcare scientists in post across NHS Scotland.

The instigation in 2009 of the Healthcare science workstream at NHS Education for Scotland was a new venture for the organisation. The NES Healthcare Science core team act as the national focus for Healthcare Science education and training in four ways: we commission training, we offer trainee and supervisor support, we offer generic CPD resources and we quality assure training departments. 

For the NES staff conference, we are celebrating 20 years of NES and the achievements and developments the Healthcare Scientist directorate have supported and contributed to our Healthcare Science workforce.

Please visit our Turas Learn page for all our resources and signposting to be displayed and viewed on the day of the conference at ; NES 2022 Hybrid Staff Conference | Turas | Learn (nhs.scot)  

Back to previous page