Care Technologist: A Real Role Category, Not a Placeholder

The Department of Health and Social Care added a role category called care technologist to the Care Workforce Pathway on 16 July 2026. It is easy to assume a title like that is a placeholder — a gesture at digital transformation with nothing behind it.

It is not. The published role category has nine knowledge and skills areas, named behaviours including the safe and ethical use of AI, two levels of the digital skills framework, four named qualifications and two development programmes. Whatever you think of the title, the content is real.

What the role is, and what it is not

A care technologist uses technology to help people with care and support needs live more independently, and to prevent harm. The role category is explicit that it does not provide direct personal care, though the person doing it needs to understand how personal care is delivered.

The employment model is unusual and worth noting: the role category says a care technologist may be employed by a care organisation or by a wider network such as a local council. That is a nod to the reality that most technology-enabled care capability currently sits at commissioner level rather than provider level.

Settings named are people's own homes, residential settings, supported independent living and day services.

The nine knowledge and skills areas

These are the substance of the role, and they are more operational than the title suggests.

Technology-enabled care comes first: systems and devices, installing and troubleshooting them, promoting secure use, interoperability between systems, and contracts and equipment maintenance. That last one is telling — someone has to own the asset register and the maintenance contracts, and in most services nobody currently does.

Then data and records: using a digital social care record, and ensuring the quality of care technology data. Then assessment and reporting: person-centred assessments, recording outcomes as "I" statements, and evaluating whether the technology is actually working.

Then communication, collaboration and time management, including caseload management. Then problem-solving, including remote connectivity. Then health and social care systems — frameworks, funding and grant routes, and advocacy. Then risk management, contributing to risk assessments that involve technology.

Setting-specific training is left to the organisation, defined by the needs of the people it supports.

Read as a job description, that is a hybrid role: part assessor, part technician, part contract manager, part data steward. It is not an IT support post and it is not a care post.

The behaviours, including the AI one

Four behaviour clusters are set out as things the role must do. Making technology accessible and inclusive, with regard to data protection, safety and ethics. Using AI safely and ethically, and keeping up with technology trends. Putting person-centred care first, with technology enhancing rather than replacing personal support. Working collaboratively with individuals, families and external partners. And promoting safeguarding and maintaining confidentiality.

The AI behaviour is, as far as we can tell, the first time an adult social care role description published by government has named AI as a competence. It is brief, and it is not accompanied by any named learning, but it is there — and it sets a reasonable expectation that someone in this role can explain what a tool is doing with a person's data.

The person-centred clause is doing quiet work too. Technology enhancing rather than replacing personal support is the sentence to quote back when a commissioning conversation drifts towards technology as a staffing substitute.

Named training and qualifications

Two pieces of training are specified. Oliver McGowan training on learning disability and autism at Tier 1 if not already completed, rising to Tier 2 in settings providing direct care to people with a learning disability or autistic people. And the Adult Social Care Digital Skills Framework, with all Level 1 competencies expected and Level 2 competencies also usable.

Four qualifications are suggested, not required: Level 2 Introduction to Assistive Technology in Health and Care; Level 3 Using Assistive Technology in Health and Care; Level 5 Award in Understanding Digital Leadership in Adult Social Care; and Level 5 Award in Managing Assistive Technology in Health and Care Environments. Two programmes are also suggested: the Skills for Care Digital Leadership programme, and the Better Security, Better Care cyber security e-learning from the Digital Care Hub.

That is a more complete qualification ladder than most of the pathway's newer categories have, running from a Level 2 introduction to two Level 5 awards covering leadership and management of the technology itself.

Where the role sits in a career

The role category has no formal progression section, but its two worked examples are instructive about how people get there, and they come from opposite directions.

One progresses from care support worker to senior support worker to care technologist, then specialises in AI and data ethics. The other comes from a local authority IT support technician background into the care technologist role after completing adult social care training.

Both routes are plausible and they imply different training needs. Someone arriving from care needs the technical and contractual content. Someone arriving from IT needs the care content, the assessment skills and the safeguarding grounding. A single training programme for this role will serve one of those two badly unless it is built with both entry points in mind.

What this means for a provider right now

Very few services have a care technologist. Most have technology, scattered across sensors, falls detection, medication reminders, digital care records and whatever a commissioner funded three years ago, with nobody responsible for whether any of it still works or whether anyone is reading the data.

The honest first step is not to create the post. It is to use the nine knowledge areas as a diagnostic. Who owns the equipment maintenance contracts? Who checks the quality of the data coming off the devices? Who evaluates whether a piece of technology improved anything for the person it was installed for? Who can explain the data protection position on the AI features in your care planning system?

In most services those questions have either no answer or four different partial ones. That is the gap the role category describes, and naming it is useful whether or not you ever recruit to it.

For the underlying technology picture in residential settings, our guide to assistive technology and digital care tools covers the tools themselves. For where this role sits among the other seventeen, see our guide to the Care Workforce Pathway role categories, and for the digital expectations that now run across most of them, our guide to Oliver McGowan mandatory training covers the other training the pathway names.