Fifty points over two years sounds like the hard part. It isn't.
Forty of those fifty you will accumulate almost by accident — reading, webinars, a conference, supervising a student. The other ten are the ones that will catch people out, and not because they are difficult. Because they depend on somebody else's calendar.
Here is how the requirement actually works, and where the real pinch is.
The dates, firmly
From 1 January 2027, CPE becomes a condition of renewing your Practising Certificate. That is AHPC's published requirement for every registered allied health professional holding full or restricted registration.
If you renew before then, you owe nothing — 2026 and 2027 renewals carry no CPE obligation at all. The first renewal that will ask you for points falls on 31 December 2028, assessed across a qualifying period running 1 January 2027 to 31 December 2028.
No points, no renewal. And no renewal means no practising certificate, which is the part worth sitting with for a moment, because it makes this an administrative deadline with clinical consequences.
The two numbers
- Two-year PC: 50 points total. At least 10 must be core.
- One-year PC: 25 points total. At least 5 must be core.
Core means the topic sits inside your own profession. Non-core means healthcare-related but outside it — a physiotherapist sitting a session on health administration or infection control would be earning non-core points. Still claimable, just not against the core minimum. Anything with no connection to allied health, general medical healthcare or your current job scope earns nothing.
Twenty per cent core. That is the whole rule, and it is the reason this is easier than it sounds and harder than it looks.
Why the forty is easy
Look at how AHPC allocates points and the asymmetry becomes obvious.
- Category 1A — local, pre-approved. Lectures, teaching sessions, case studies, journal clubs. One point per hour.
- Category 1B — local ad-hoc events and postgraduate study. Conferences, seminars, workshops, structured courses. Four points per day.
- Category 1C — international. Overseas conferences, workshops and attachments. Four points per day; attachments cap at 40.
- Category 1D — supervised learning. Five points per block supervising, four being supervised. Each caps at 40.
- Category 2 — publications. Five as author, two as co-author or reviewer. Caps at 40.
- Category 3A — self-directed, no assessment. Journals, textbooks, guidelines. Two points each, caps at 20.
- Category 3B — self-directed, with assessment. E-learning and webinars that test you. Four points each, caps at 40.
- Category 4 — projects and non-accredited events. QI and innovation presentations, two each, caps at 10.
Most of that list is things you already do. Ten e-learning modules with an assessment attached is forty points on its own. A conference, two supervision blocks and a year of journal reading gets you most of the way. None of it requires clearing your diary.
One warning. Category 3A is where people will come unstuck. Reading journals and guidelines feels like the obvious way to accrue points precisely because you are already doing it — and it pays two at a time and stops dead at twenty. It is fine as filler. It cannot carry a cycle, and it earns you no core points unless the reading is profession-specific.
Why the ten is hard
Core points need an activity inside your own profession. In practice that means a structured course, a profession-specific conference, or supervised clinical learning — and every one of those happens on a date somebody else sets.
That is the constraint. Not effort. Not cost. Availability.
A dry needling course runs when it runs. Spinal articular therapy runs when it runs. If you arrive at October 2028 needing ten core points and nothing in your discipline is scheduled before your renewal, there is no amount of reading that fixes it — Category 3A caps at twenty and most of it won't be core anyway.
The clinicians who find this painless will be the ones who booked one course in 2027 and stopped thinking about it. The ones who find it stressful will be the ones who assumed points were something you could accumulate on demand.
Three routes to fifty
Take a physiotherapist on a two-year PC.
The one-course route. Sit a two-and-a-half-day course in your discipline. Category 1B, four points a day: ten points, all core. Core requirement discharged in a single week. Fill the remaining forty with e-learning, a conference and your existing reading.
The teaching route. Supervise two student blocks — ten points, and core if the placement is in your field. Add a journal club you already attend at one point per hour.
The academic route. Author a paper for five, present a QI project for two, and cover the rest with a profession-specific conference. Slower, but it counts.
All three land in the same place. What they share is that the core portion is settled early, deliberately, against a date in a diary.
One genuine grey area
Whether a given activity counts as core is not always obvious. A physiotherapist attending a footwear-and-lower-limb course sits close to the boundary — profession-adjacent, arguably profession-specific, depending on how AHPC reads it.
We are not going to guess on your behalf. If a course matters to your core ten, confirm its classification before you rely on it rather than after.
If you're a podiatrist, none of this applies to you
AHPC keeps registers for five professions: diagnostic radiographers, occupational therapists, physiotherapists, radiation therapists and speech-language therapists.
Podiatry is not among them. Podiatrists practising in Singapore are not registered under the Allied Health Professions Act, and no AHPC CPE requirement attaches to your practice — not in 2027, not in 2028.
Worth saying plainly, because almost everything written on Singapore CPE says "allied health professionals" while quietly meaning those five. If you have been bracing for a fifty-point obligation, it was never coming. Continuing education still earns its place in your year. It simply does so on your terms.
Three things worth doing now
Find your renewal date. It sets your qualifying period. Everything else follows from it.
Book the core ten first, for 2027. Not because ten points is a lot, but because courses have dates and you do not control them. This is the only part of the requirement that can genuinely run out.
**Open your PRS record during the voluntary phase.** It has been available since March 2024. Logging activities now costs nothing and means you meet the submission interface at a point where getting it wrong has no consequence.
If you are deciding which structured course clears your core points, our physiotherapy listing sets out what each covers, who it is aimed at, and how many days it runs — which is what determines the points.