The number of actuaries in Health & Care is still relatively small but growing. It is important that as the profession continues to expand in this area the level of expertise is maintained and where possible improved. It is therefore vital that the actuaries involved should accept that it is their personal responsibility to keep fully up to date with current developments and techniques.

The Health & Care Practice Executive Committee is actively engaged in creating the conditions to encourage the development of formal and informal CPD for actuaries. The Committee provides distance-learning modules that have been developed into formal CPD opportunities. The big step was the Health and Care modules in 2001 with the first cohort of students being examined for the first time in 2005. In line with this development, material in the modules was replaced by the core reading for the 2005 exams.

In addition we hope that members from other professional communities involved in healthcare will find these modules of interest, both in understanding what actuarial perspectives have to offer and in serving as a bridgehead for future collaboration between professionals. In this light, the Committee has been engaged in meeting members of other professions and bodies who share an interest in healthcare. The Committee believes that actuarial perspectives are relevant to and have much to offer public as well as private provision in healthcare. At the same time the profession has much to learn from these encounters.

Subjects for technical needs analysis