Nobody told me healthcare had technical roles — so I had to find them myself

When I was filling out my UCAS application, the careers advice for healthcare was pretty straightforward. Doctor. Nurse. Physiotherapist. Maybe radiographer if you wanted to feel adventurous.

Nobody mentioned cardiac physiologist. And nobody — not once — mentioned that you could work in healthcare and spend your days knee deep in clinical systems, device integrations, and technical workflows rather than directly at the bedside.

I’ve been a cardiac physiologist for over eight years. For most of that time I was doing what most people picture when they think of clinical work — supporting patients, running diagnostic tests, working in cath labs and CRM services across multiple NHS trusts.

But a big part of my role that nobody talks about was technical. I was the primary escalation contact for device and application issues across the department. I wrote SOPs and governance documentation to standardise how systems were used. I trained junior staff. I worked with clinical suppliers to troubleshoot integration issues that were affecting patient safety. I reviewed remote monitoring data and identified system discrepancies that needed escalating.

I was essentially doing clinical IT support, implementation work, and technical governance — I just didn’t have those words for it at the time.

Late 2025, I decided to stop doing it accidentally and start doing it on purpose.

I started studying. Microsoft’s Healthcare Data Management, Security and Compliance course. AWS Cloud Practitioner. Building small projects to make the learning practical rather than just theoretical. I started looking at roles like Clinical Implementation Specialist, Clinical Application Specialist, and HL7/FHIR Integration — roles that sit right at the intersection of clinical knowledge and technical delivery.

The more I looked, the more I realised this space is full of people like me who came from clinical backgrounds and found their way into the technical side of healthcare. And it’s also full of job descriptions asking for exactly the kind of experience I’d been building without realising it.

If you’re a clinician reading this and you’ve ever found yourself more interested in how the system works than what it’s telling you — you might be closer to a technical role than you think.

Healthcare needs people who understand both sides. The clinical knowledge doesn’t go away when you move into implementation or integration work. It becomes your biggest advantage.

There are technical roles in healthcare. They just don’t tell you about them at school.

