Frequently Asked Questions

Who created the Five Pillars of Digital Health?

The Five Pillars of Digital Health framework was created by Ufuoma O. in 2025 as part of the Digital Health Explainer Series. It was built to give people a clear, sequenced map of how digital health fits together and where they would fit within it — something no existing resource had provided from a career navigation perspective.

Is the Five Pillars framework the same as the NHS DTAC five-pillar model?

No. The NHS Digital Technology Assessment Criteria (DTAC) uses a five-pillar model to assess whether a digital health product is safe to procure and deploy. The Five Pillars of Digital Health is a workforce and career framework — its purpose is to help people understand the sector and navigate their career within it, not to assess digital products. They are built for entirely different purposes.

Which pillar should I focus on if I am new to digital health?

It depends on where you are starting from. If you come from a clinical role, start with Bedside (Clinical Practice and Informatics). If you come from NHS administration or records, start with Foundation or Lifeblood. If you come from project management or strategy, start with Compass. If you come from training or education, start with Future. Use the Career Matcher at digitalhealthcareersmatcher.ufuomao.com for a personalised answer based on your specific background.

Do I need a technology degree to work in digital health?

No. The majority of digital health roles in the NHS do not require a computer science or technology degree. What they require is an understanding of how the relevant pillar works in practice — which is exactly what the Five Pillars framework and the Digital Health Explainer Series are designed to give you.

About the Author

Ufuoma O. is a Digital Health Project Manager, CIO Advisory Panel Member at Digital Health Networks, and the creator of the Five Pillars of Digital Health framework. She founded the Self Starter Collective and the Digital Health Explainer Series to help people at every level of the NHS navigate careers in digital health — from band 2 healthcare assistants to experienced clinicians considering a career change. All her resources are free and available at ufuomao.com.

What Are the Five Pillars of Digital Health and Why Do They Matter for Your Career?

If you have been trying to understand digital health — what it actually is, how it fits together, and where you would fit within it — the Five Pillars of Digital Health framework was built specifically to answer those questions. Created in 2025, the Five Pillars organises the entire sector into five stages that build on each other in sequence: Foundation, Lifeblood, Compass, Bedside, and Future. Understanding this framework is the fastest way to go from "I think I want to work in digital health" to "I know exactly which door to knock on."

What Is the Five Pillars of Digital Health Framework?

The Five Pillars of Digital Health is a career and workforce framework created by Ufuoma O. in 2025. It maps the digital health sector as five interdependent stages — Foundation, Lifeblood, Compass, Bedside, and Future — designed to show NHS staff, career-changers, and digital health professionals not just what the sector contains, but where they would actually fit within it and what roles sit inside each stage.

Why Does This Matter for NHS Careers Right Now?

The NHS 10 Year Health Plan, published in 2025, places digital transformation at the centre of how the health service will function for the next decade. The shift from analogue to digital is one of its three defining ambitions, alongside moving care from hospital to community and from sickness to prevention. That means digital health is no longer a niche specialism sitting in an IT department — it is embedded across every part of the NHS, from ward-level clinical systems to national data infrastructure.

For anyone working in or around the NHS, that shift creates a careers opportunity that did not exist five years ago. The NHS Digital Skills Development Network estimates that tens of thousands of new digital roles will need to be filled across health and social care over the coming decade. Understanding the Five Pillars is how you position yourself to fill one of them.

The Five Pillars ExplainedThe framework is a sequence, not a list. Each pillar is a precondition for the one that follows — which is the thing that makes it a genuine model of how digital health works, rather than five categories someone has decided to group together.

Pillar 1 — Foundation (Infrastructure)

Connectivity, hardware, digital maturity

The base everything else stands on. No EPR, no app, no AI tool functions without the right infrastructure in place first. This is the most common entry point into digital health careers — implementation leads, IT project managers, digital rollout coordinators, and infrastructure engineers all live in this pillar.

Pillar 2 — Lifeblood (Data)

Information flow, standards, governance

What moves through the system once it is connected. The single patient record, shared care records, and the Federated Data Platform all sit here. The NHS Digital Skills Development Network has identified this as the pillar with the widest skills gap right now — which makes it one of the most accessible pillars for people with backgrounds in data, information governance, or records management.

Pillar 3 — Compass (Leadership and Digital Strategy)

Direction, governance, transformation

Where someone decides what all that infrastructure and data is actually for. This is where digital strategy roles, programme directors, change managers, and NHS Chief Digital Information Officers operate. If you have a background in project management, organisational change, or healthcare management, this is the pillar where your experience translates most directly.

Pillar 4 — Bedside (Clinical Practice and Informatics)

Workflow, usability, clinical safety

Where digital health meets the people actually delivering care. This pillar determines whether a well-built system gets used as intended, or quietly worked around by stretched staff. Clinical informaticists, digital clinical leads, chief nursing information officers, and clinical safety officers all sit here. If you come from a clinical background, this is almost always your natural starting point.

Pillar 5 — Future (Education and Training)

Skills, adoption, digital literacy

The pillar that makes everything in pillars one through four last. No system survives contact with reality without people trained to carry it forward — yet this is consistently the pillar that gets underfunded in NHS digital programmes and then blamed when rollouts struggle. Digital training leads, digital adoption specialists, and workforce development roles all live here.

Where Do You Fit in the Five Pillars?

This is the question the framework is designed to answer — and it looks different depending on where you are starting from.

If you come from an NHS admin background, you are probably already working inside the Foundation and Lifeblood pillars every day — logging into systems, managing patient data, processing referrals. The career move into digital health is often a lateral step into a named role within the pillar you already know, rather than a leap into something entirely foreign.

If you come from a clinical background, Bedside (Clinical Practice and Informatics) is almost always the most natural entry point, because it is the pillar built around the workflows and clinical safety considerations you already understand. From there, many people move into Compass (Leadership and Digital Strategy) as they take on transformation-focused responsibilities.

If you come from outside health entirely — from tech, data, project management, or education — each of those backgrounds maps onto a different pillar. A data analyst maps to Lifeblood. A project manager maps to Compass. A trainer maps to Future. The framework exists to show you that your route in is not blocked — it is just not labelled yet.

Not sure which pillar fits you? The Digital Health Careers Matcher at [digitalhealthcareersmatcher.ufuomao.com] was built to answer exactly that question. It takes your background, skills, and goals and shows you which pillar — and which specific roles within it — align with where you are now.

Practical Next Steps

If you have just encountered the Five Pillars framework for the first time, here is what to do today.

1. Use the Career Matcher to identify which pillar your background sits in — digitalhealthcareersmatcher.ufuomao.com

2. Watch the free course — the Digital Health Explainer Series on YouTube walks through each pillar in detail, with no prior knowledge required

3. Find a volunteering opportunity in your target pillar using the Volunteering Tool at ufuomao.com/resources — this is how you build experience in the sector before you apply for a role

4. Join the Self Starter Collective — a free newsletter community for people navigating digital health careers, with resources, opportunities, and sector intelligence delivered directly to your inbox

5. Read the full framework breakdown at ufuomao.com/five-pillars — including how each pillar maps to specific NHS job titles