Frequently Asked Questions

CPD Bee is a voice- and document-powered CPD tracking web app designed specifically for UK healthcare professionals. It helps you record, manage, and export CPD activities to meet GMC, HCPC, NMC, and AHCS regulatory requirements — whether that's GMC annual appraisal and 5-year revalidation, NMC revalidation, or HCPC/AHCS audits. You can use it on any device — iPhone, Android, tablet, or desktop.

CPD Bee is built for UK healthcare professionals regulated by the GMC, HCPC, NMC, and AHCS — 59 professional categories in total. This includes GPs and 34 hospital specialties (cardiology, respiratory, surgery, anaesthetics, paediatrics, psychiatry, radiology, obs & gynae, oncology, and more), nurses (adult, children's, mental health, learning disability), midwives, nursing associates, clinical physiologists (audiologists, cardiac, respiratory, neuro, sleep, vascular), physiotherapists, radiographers, occupational therapists, dietitians, speech and language therapists, podiatrists, paramedics, operating department practitioners, biomedical scientists, and clinical scientists.

Yes. All new Professional accounts get a 28-day free trial with full access to every feature. We ask for a payment method at the start so your access continues without interruption when the trial ends — but you won’t be charged anything during the 28 days, and we send a reminder email three days before the trial ends so you have time to decide.

If you’d rather not continue, cancel anytime from your Account page before the trial ends and no charge will be taken. After the trial, the Professional plan is £4.99/month. The Small Team plan (up to 8 members) has no free trial: it’s self-service at £29.99/month, billed from the day you subscribe.

Yes — we ask for your card details at the start of the trial so your access continues without interruption when the trial ends. You won’t be charged anything during the 28-day trial. If you’d rather not continue, cancel anytime from your Account page and no charge will be taken. We also send a reminder email three days before your trial ends.

Payments are handled by Stripe — CPD Bee never sees or stores your card details.

No. CPD Bee runs entirely in your web browser. There is nothing to install — just visit cpdbee.co.uk and log in. It works on Safari, Chrome, Firefox, and Edge across all devices.

Tap the microphone button and speak naturally about your CPD activity — what you did, what you learned, how it will change your practice. On a computer, your browser's speech recognition transcribes your words as you speak. On a phone or tablet, CPD Bee records your whole account — pauses and all — and transcribes it when you tap Stop. The transcript, with clinical terms corrected for your profession, then goes to our AI, which generates a complete, structured CPD record including title, activity type, hours, description, reflection, and impact on patient care.

Yes — and your words are corrected before the AI sees them. Speech recognition often splits or misspells clinical terms, so CPD Bee corrects them for your profession: more than 850 corrections for doctors, from GP consultation vocabulary (safety-netting, QRISK, fit notes) to appraisal terms (PDSA cycles, significant events); more than 200 for clinical physiology and audiology (spirometry, tympanometry, echocardiography); and smaller sets for nursing, midwifery and the allied health professions (for nurses, “vena puncture” becomes venepuncture and “s bar” becomes SBAR). Common US spellings are changed to UK spellings. On a phone or tablet, CPD Bee also gives the speech-to-text service a short list of your profession’s terms. The corrections are designed to leave a correctly heard term alone, and the AI is told to keep your clinical terminology exactly as you said it. If a term still comes out wrong, report it with the feedback button so we can add it.

Absolutely. The AI generates a draft record which you can review and edit before saving. You have full control over every field — title, description, reflection, learning outcomes, and impact on practice. The AI is there to save you time, not to replace your professional judgement.

Recording Style is a preference you can set in your Profile that controls the tone and writing style of AI-generated CPD content. There are five options: Standard (the default balanced style), Formal (third-person academic tone), Informal (conversational and approachable), Scientific (evidence-based, methodological language), and Brevity (concise, roughly half the normal word count). Your chosen style applies to all AI-generated descriptions, reflections, and patient benefit statements. You can change it at any time from your Profile page.

The five styles are designed to let your CPD records reflect your natural voice. Standard is the default balanced professional style. Formal uses third-person academic language ("The practitioner attended..."). Informal is conversational first-person ("I went to a really useful session..."). Scientific uses evidence-based, methodological phrasing ("Evidence from this session supports..."). Brevity produces concise records with roughly half the word count — same clinical accuracy, fewer words. Your style preference is saved to your profile and applies every time AI generates content for you.

Yes. You can drag and drop Word (.docx), Excel (.xlsx), PDF, and PowerPoint (.pptx) files directly into CPD Bee. The AI reads your documents, extracts CPD activities, and creates structured records automatically — preserving dates, descriptions, reflections, and activity types from your original documents.

Your original documents are saved securely alongside the CPD record they were imported from. They are encrypted at rest using AES-256 encryption and are only accessible to you. You can delete them at any time.

The Course Finder searches real professional body websites (such as RCN, SCST, BSE, ARTP, BTS, CSP, RCOT, and many more) to find CPD courses relevant to your profession and search terms. It uses Jina Reader to fetch actual course listings from these sites, then AI extracts and structures the results. You can also click "Fill My Gaps" to let the AI analyse your CPD portfolio and suggest courses that would address areas you haven't covered recently.

When you find courses you're interested in, click "Keep" to save them. Kept courses are sorted into three tabs based on their delivery method: Online (e-learning, webinars, self-paced modules), UK Based (face-to-face courses and conferences in the UK), and International (overseas conferences and training). The AI Discovered tab is where new search results appear for you to review, keep, or dismiss.

Yes. CPD Bee fetches course information directly from professional body websites using a headless browser. The AI extracts only courses that are actually listed on those pages — it does not invent or hallucinate courses. However, we always recommend clicking "View Course" to verify details, dates, and availability directly with the provider before booking.

Yes. CPD Bee supports GPs and 34 hospital specialties with GMC-specific features including a Revalidation dashboard, CPD credit tracking (External/Internal/Personal categories), GMP 2024 domain mapping, Personal Development Plan tracking, annual appraisal report PDF export, and AI-generated appraisal summaries. Voice recording corrects clinical terms for doctors: more than 850 corrections, including specialty-level ones for 23 specialties, plus a shared appraisal and governance vocabulary.

Yes. For RCP, RCS, RCoA, RCEM, and other college physicians, CPD Bee tracks the 50 credits per year recommendation with External (target 25), Internal, and Personal category breakdowns. You can also record activity codes from approved CPD events. GPs using the RCGP framework focus on quality of reflection rather than credits — CPD Bee adapts to your regulatory approach and hides the credit card for GP accounts.

Yes. CPD Bee generates a comprehensive Annual Appraisal Report PDF that includes your doctor details, CPD credit summary, supporting information breakdown, GMP domain coverage, PDP progress, declarations, and a full activity log with reflections. You can also generate an AI-written summary of your CPD for discussion with your appraiser — it's a starting point you review and personalise before your appraisal meeting.

Each CPD record can be tagged as one of the six GMC supporting information types: CPD activity, quality improvement, significant event, colleague feedback, patient feedback, or complaints and compliments. The Revalidation tab shows your progress across all six types for your current 5-year cycle, highlighting which types are still required this year or this cycle.

Yes. Drag and drop PDF certificates, Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, or PowerPoint presentations. CPD Bee's AI reads the document content and generates a structured CPD record with title, dates, duration, provider, description, reflection, and impact on practice. For doctors, it also infers credit category (external / internal / personal), clinical type, GMP domains, and supporting information type. You review and edit before saving.

Sensitive record fields (descriptions, reflections, and patient benefit statements) are encrypted with AES-256-GCM using per-user encryption keys. Each user has a unique key derived from their account — even the developer cannot read your clinical reflections in the database. Your data is further protected by row-level security, two-factor authentication, leaked password protection (HaveIBeenPwned), HTTPS everywhere, and strict Content Security Policy headers.

CPD Bee provides an audit readiness score based on the four HCPC standards: maintaining accurate records, a mixture of activity types, demonstrating impact on practice, and evidencing benefit to service users. Your dashboard shows your current score and highlights areas that need attention. When audit day comes, you can export your complete portfolio as a PDF, Word document, or Excel spreadsheet.

Yes. Nurses and midwives have access to a dedicated NMC Revalidation dashboard that tracks all revalidation requirements: 35 CPD hours (with minimum 20 participatory), reflective accounts, confirmation of professional indemnity, practice hours, health and character declaration, third-party confirmation, and NMC Code coverage. You can export a revalidation-ready portfolio PDF with one click.

You can export your CPD records as PDF (formatted for audit submission), Microsoft Word (.docx), or Microsoft Excel (.xlsx). Exports include all record details — title, date, duration, activity type, provider, description, reflection, learning outcomes, and impact on practice. NMC users can also export a dedicated revalidation portfolio.

The Small Team plan (£29.99/month) includes everything in Professional, plus team management for up to 8 members, a team dashboard showing each member's CPD progress and audit readiness, individual member profiles, custom organisation branding (your logo appears throughout the app), GMC/HCPC/NMC/AHCS audit and revalidation tools, compliance reporting, and priority support.

The team owner invites members by email. Each invitation generates a secure token that is valid for 7 days. Invited members can create a new account, or join with an existing free account. Team members retain full ownership of their own CPD records — the team lead can see progress summaries but individual record content remains private to each user.

All data is encrypted at rest using AES-256 encryption — the same standard used by governments and financial institutions. All connections use HTTPS/TLS encryption in transit. Your account can be protected with TOTP-based two-factor authentication (compatible with Google Authenticator, Microsoft Authenticator, and Authy). Each user's data is isolated at the database level using row-level security policies.

Yes. CPD Bee is fully GDPR compliant including Article 17 Right to Erasure. You can request complete deletion of all your data at any time with a single action from your Account settings. CPD Bee does not remove personal information automatically. As our privacy policy explains, do not include patient-identifiable information in your CPD records, and always anonymise any clinical examples or case studies.

Yes. You can delete your account from the Account settings page. This permanently removes your profile, all CPD records, uploaded documents, and any associated data. This action cannot be undone.

Yes. On Professional, you can upgrade to Small Team from your Account page. If you’re still in your free trial, you keep your remaining trial days and £29.99/month starts when the trial ends. Otherwise your plan changes straight away, and the difference for the rest of your billing period goes on your next invoice. To move from Small Team back to Professional, contact us.

Payments are processed securely through Stripe. We accept all major credit and debit cards.

Yes. Teams of up to 8 are self-service on the Small Team plan; beyond that we’ll set you up on a plan sized with you. Contracted setups can include SSO and integrations built to your spec, custom reporting, a dedicated account manager, on-site training, and an SLA guarantee. Contact us at the email address on our pricing page for details.