New-look online register improves accessibility

Patients will be able to find information about their doctors faster - including from phones - thanks to our improved search tool for the medical register.

Our online records receive about 10 million hits every year from employers, patients and professionals who use it to check that doctors are qualified and eligible to practise.

The new-look tool makes it easier to find the right information with better filtering, clearer prompts and visual cues. Though the design has been updated, the factual content displayed has not been changed, meaning users will still be able to find where doctors qualified, when they joined the register and if they have a designated body connection for revalidation.

Issues around mobile access have also been resolved, so users can search for information on phones or tablets without having to navigate a clunky system.

Other new features include PDF downloads and a function to search for multiple doctors at once.

The introduction of icons allows users to see at a glance if a doctor is registered with a licence to practise, on the GP or specialist registers, no longer registered or has been suspended or erased.

Paul Chew, Head of Enterprise Systems at the GMC said:

‘Technology has moved on considerably since we introduced our online register in 2006.

‘The information we publish is extremely important to patients, doctors and employers and this modern, user-friendly version will make searches faster and more convenient across a range of devices.’

Register facts:

• There were 16,081 doctors on the first UK medical register published in 1859
  
  
• There are now more than 310,000 doctors on the register, of whom over 260,000 hold a licence to practise.
  
  
• Women make up 47.8% of licensed doctors
  
  
• General internal medicine and anaesthetists are the biggest specialty groups, with 10,620 and 10,369 licensed registrants, respectively. There are 63,481 licensed GPs.