Hospital doctors' CPD tooling gets less editorial attention than GPs', partly because the centre of gravity is fixed: for consultant and SAS physicians, the Federation's scheme and its diary are the system of record, and everything else arranges itself around them. That arrangement, though, has improved markedly in the last eighteen months, and a 2026 stack can now cover recording, storage, events, teaching evidence and, the rare part, assessed knowledge, largely without touching the study-leave budget. Here are the pieces.
Physicians' CPD Diary: the scheme of record
The Federation of the Royal Colleges of Physicians' online diary, used by well over seventeen thousand consultant and SAS physicians, is where the credit scheme lives: activity recording against the scheme's categories, a database of thousands of Federation-approved events, and, since the guidance modernised, approved e-learning and e-libraries counting as external credits. The companion Physicians' CPD app is genuinely good: voice-transcribed reflections at the point of learning, offline entry, attachments, mapping to Good Medical Practice domains, and a one-tap annual appraisal report as a PDF. Free as a membership benefit of the three colleges, £165 annually for non-members (last checked August 2026). If you are in the scheme, this is non-negotiable and, used with the app, nearly painless.
BMJ Portfolio: the free general store
Relaunched in July 2026, free for all healthcare professionals: CPD logging from any provider, secure storage for reflections and documents, dashboards of hours and deadlines, AI-supported reflection drafting within current guidance, and clean exports. For hospital doctors its role is the year-round capture layer beneath the college scheme, particularly for the cross-cutting material, teaching, QI, leadership learning, that the credit diary records but does not richly store. At zero cost, it has essentially ended the case for paying for a bare CPD log.
MedAll: events and teaching evidence
The community education platform's catalogue of courses, conferences and free CPD-accredited webinars fills the approved-events component accessibly, with certificates flowing through its app. Its second function matters especially at consultant level: hosting your own teaching through the platform generates attendance and feedback evidence automatically, which is exactly the supporting information the educator dimension of appraisal wants and which most consultants currently reconstruct from emails each spring.
CPDme: the multi-profession option
For clinicians in mixed teams, or SAS doctors whose departments standardise tooling across professions, CPDme's subscription portfolio, mobile capture, evidence storage, exports, remains a serviceable generalist, with the honest 2026 caveat that free alternatives now cover much of its territory.
Royal College learning platforms
Each college's own e-learning, and the Federation's approved-activity database reached through the diary, remain the low-friction sources of scheme-aligned external credits, with the e-learning route now uncapped in the physician scheme's current guidelines. Specialty society programmes slot in the same way. The principle: prefer approved sources for the external component, and let the diary's database do the finding.
iatroX: the assessed-knowledge layer
The gap in almost every physician portfolio is evidence of maintained knowledge, as opposed to maintained attendance. iatroX supplies it: adaptive question banks spanning the medical specialties, including all 13 SCE specialty areas, spaced repetition scheduling the returns, the Socratic Tutor interrogating misses against cited guidance, askiatroX for the working day's clinical questions, and My CPD packaging topic, time, performance, correction and reflection into records ready for the diary or any portfolio, with mobile apps that fit the gaps a hospital day actually contains. Free tier includes askiatroX and selected full banks, among them MRCP Part 1; the complete platform is £29 monthly or £99 annually (last checked August 2026).
Assembling the stack
A clean 2026 arrangement: the Physicians' CPD Diary and its app as the scheme of record; BMJ Portfolio beneath as free general storage; MedAll for accessible events and automatic teaching evidence; college platforms for approved e-learning; iatroX generating the assessed spine, a monthly specialty question session filed as a self-certified entry with its performance record attached. Mobile coverage across the stack is now genuinely good, diary app, MedAll app, iatroX apps, which matters for a working pattern where CPD happens between referrals or not at all. Total recurring cost for a college member: £99. The scarce input remains the hour a week; the stack's job is making that hour produce evidence worth the name.
Frequently asked questions
How do assessed iatroX sessions enter the Federation diary?
As self-certified entries: activity, date, honest time, category per the current scheme guidelines, with the My CPD summary attached as supporting documentation and the reflection completed in the entry, by voice on the app if you prefer. The scheme's recognition of structured e-learning makes this unremarkable; the attached performance record is what makes it stand out.
What about specialties outside the physician Federation?
The stack's shape transfers: your own college's scheme and platform as the system of record, the free store beneath, events and teaching evidence from the same sources, and assessed knowledge maintenance in your specialty's territory. Only the top layer's branding changes.
Is teaching evidence really worth systematising?
At consultant level, yes: educator roles recur at every appraisal and job plan, and feedback reconstructed from memory is the weakest version of evidence that a platform can generate automatically at the moment of teaching. Five minutes of setup per session buys the file you otherwise assemble each spring.