Train to design non-medical topical and olfactory products as a considered, structured response to what a particular person needs. A Level 3 Foundation Award and a Level 4 Diploma, leading to practice as an Integrative Therapeutic Formulation Practitioner.
Taught and personally supervised by Deana Kassim, who created the qualification.
Enrol any time.
There are many kinds of people who find their way to this qualification.
There are those who know botanical plant materials deeply. Years of study, real understanding of these often aromatic materials and what they do. What they were never taught is how to take that knowledge into formulation and create a product that is stable, safe, pleasant to use, and right for the person in front of them.
Others work commercially, making skincare products beautifully. Emulsions that hold, balms with the right feel, products that behave themselves. What they were never taught is how to start with the needs of an individual person rather than formulating for a customer demographic.
Others come from healthcare, complementary therapy or wellbeing backgrounds, already experienced in working with people but wanting to bring formulation knowledge and practical skills into their practice.
Different starting points, but the next step is the same: the ITF qualification, learning to formulate for the whole person, not a single concern.
By the end of the Diploma, you will be able to sit down with someone, take a structured consultation, and understand what they actually need.
You will design a formulation for that person as a whole, working from scratch with natural and functional materials, choosing every one because it earns its place. And you will be able to explain to the client, another practitioner, or anyone who asks, exactly why each one is there and what it is doing.
You will make it yourself, across four formulation bases, safely and to a standard you can document.
You will hand it over with clear guidance, see the person again, review what actually happened, and decide whether to adjust, continue or reformulate.
And you will finish having already done this thirty times, with ten real clients, under supervision. You won’t just have learned how to do it. You will have done it.
Integrative Therapeutic Formulation is the design of non-medical topical and olfactory products as a structured, holistic response to a person’s wellbeing needs.
This is where the integrative element becomes important. Plant and natural ingredient knowledge and formulation skills have traditionally been taught as separate disciplines. You can understand the properties of a material without necessarily knowing how to formulate it into a product that is safe, stable, practical to use and appropriate for the individual. Integrative Therapeutic Formulation brings those areas of knowledge together.
You work with a connected palette of materials: vegetable oils, hydrolats, essential oils, plant extracts and CO₂ extracts, alongside clays, minerals, humectants, emulsifiers, preservatives and selected functional ingredients. Each is chosen for what it contributes to a particular formulation, for a particular person.
It draws on aromatherapy, botanical knowledge, natural skincare formulation, and holistic practice while remaining distinct from each. Aromatic materials are one ingredient group within a wider framework rather than the organising principle. It engages with botanical action as part of formulation reasoning, but does not teach herbal medicine and does not work with internal preparations. It shares craft with natural skincare, but is organised around what a product does for the person as a whole rather than for the appearance of skin alone.
Formulation has often been taught as a specialism within another field, so the qualification you finish with names that field first. Integrative Therapeutic Formulation works the other way round. The formulation is the discipline, which means it travels: a massage therapist, a yoga teacher, a nurse or a beauty therapist can each bring it into the practice they already have. And because it is a formulation discipline rather than a hands-on therapy, it sits alongside whatever you already do.
Plant-based formulation often begins with the product or the material: a favourite essential oil to build around, a particular product to make, or an existing formula. There is nothing wrong with any of these approaches, but Integrative Therapeutic Formulation starts somewhere different. It starts with the individual.
Someone comes to you not sleeping, tense, with uncomfortable feet and calves from standing all day, and skin that goes dry and reactive over the winter. A formula would tell you what to make. The discipline tells you how to decide.
Five decisions, and a reason behind every one. That is what you learn to do, and the practitioner should be able to explain each choice and the role it performs within the formulation.
What holds that reasoning together is the Client Formulation Plan. It records the person’s needs as they describe them, the agreed therapeutic intention, the reasoning behind the materials selected, what was made, the guidance provided, and what happened next. It is not a treatment plan, because Integrative Therapeutic Formulation is not medical treatment. It provides a structured record of the practitioner’s reasoning and makes the formulation process reviewable, repeatable and capable of being refined. The Client Formulation Plan is taught and assessed at both levels of the qualification.
Every formulation moves through the same eight stages, from identifying what the person needs through to reviewing what happened and adjusting. Seven core principles shape the decisions along the way, and both run through every module of both qualifications.
Integrative Therapeutic Formulation is taught as a Level 3 Foundation Award and a Level 4 Diploma, both benchmarked against the UK Regulated Qualifications Framework and developed independently by Purodem. Most people take both, and the qualification is designed that way.
Level 3 Foundation Award
30 credits | 300 hours total qualification time | 120 guided learning hours | 5 modules | 31 lessons
Level 3 gives you the discipline: what it is, the principles beneath it, the boundary it works within, and the framework that structures every formulation decision. Making at this level is anhydrous, balms and oil blends, worked from guided formulations, so your attention stays on the reasoning. You finish able to make and adapt safely for known users, and to bring the discipline into a practice you already have.
Level 4 Diploma
60 credits | 600 hours total qualification time | 240 guided learning hours | 6 modules | around 48 lessons | 30 supervised client case studies
Level 4 is where you become a Practitioner. You design formulations independently from scratch, reason through the framework yourself and justify each choice with evidence, and work with real clients in a formal practitioner-client relationship. The scope does not widen. A higher qualification means greater capability within the same boundary.
Module 1: Foundations of Integrative Therapeutic Formulation (12 GLH, 4 lessons) — the discipline and its relationship to neighbouring fields, the seven principles, scope of practice, and the framework.
Module 2: Anatomy, Physiology and Wellbeing Foundations (28 GLH, 7 lessons) — the skin, nervous system and stress response, and olfactory system in depth, with other body systems as context, and the lifestyle factors that shape wellbeing.
Module 3: Safe Practice, Ethics and Professional Boundaries (22 GLH, 6 lessons) — hygiene and handling, safety reasoning including pregnancy and breastfeeding contexts, ethics and boundaries, consultation and consent, record keeping, and judgement under uncertainty.
Module 4: Ingredients, Materials and Therapeutic Product Awareness (38 GLH, 8 lessons) — the largest module and the practical heart of the Award. Carriers and bases, actives and functional additions, product formats, formulation logic, and sensory reasoning, ending in a guided filmed make.
Module 5: Personal Practice, Reflection and Progression (20 GLH, 6 lessons) — structured reflective practice, honest self-evaluation, and the summative three-client assignment.
The prospectus covers each module in more detail.
Module 1: Principles and Reasoning (25 GLH) — establishes the discipline, the seven core principles, the scope of practice, and the Therapeutic Formulation Framework, then takes them into independent analytical reasoning, centred on what happens when principles conflict and those choices have to be explained.
Module 2: Applied Anatomy, Physiology and Pathophysiology (40 GLH) — skin pathophysiology, the nervous system at depth, endocrine influences, olfaction and the limbic route, and systemic conditions. Taught for formulation reasoning rather than to a clinical standard: the practitioner recognises but does not diagnose.
Module 3: Independent Formulation Design (60 GLH) — the practical heart of the Diploma. Designing from scratch across four bases, advanced ingredient selection, preservation and microbiological safety, stability, quality control, and documentation to Product Information File standard.
Module 4: Client Consultation and Case Management (50 GLH) — consultation structure, agreeing therapeutic intention, the Client Formulation Plan, consent and safeguarding, referral and red flags, and managing a case across a course of contact.
Module 5: Evidence-Informed Practice and Justification (25 GLH) — reading research and knowing what it does and does not support, recognising confounders in your own case evidence, and constructing a defensible justification.
Module 6: Professional Practice, Ethics and Reflection (40 GLH) — stating your own operational scope, the ethics of the practitioner-client relationship, records and data protection, operational compliance, and the final case portfolio.
The prospectus covers each module in more detail.
Every lesson ends with a knowledge check and a short application task your tutor reads and responds to. Each module then carries a formal assessment.
Level 3 turns on a three-client integrative assignment: for each of three theoretical clients you set out your reasoning, a Client Formulation Plan, formulations and methods of application, then make and film one product each. At Level 4, the 30 case studies form the largest single piece of assessed work.
Your portfolio is assessed on your reasoning, not on the client’s outcome. A case where the client did not improve, and you reasoned well, adjusted appropriately, and knew when to stop, is a strong case. A case where the client felt better and you cannot say why is a weak one.
The prospectus covers assessment at both levels.
The Diploma ends with ten clients you have already worked with.
You complete 30 client case studies across 10 clients: four clients seen six consecutive times each across a course of contact, and six single cases. A case is a consultation, a formulated product, guidance issued, and a review of what happened. By the end you have done the whole cycle thirty times, and you have the documented reasoning to show for every one of them.
You are not thrown into it. A theoretical pre-test comes first, where you produce a Client Formulation Plan for a set of client scenarios, including at least one where the right answer is to refer or decline. Then the independent formulation project, where you design a complex water-containing formulation from scratch, make it, film it, and document it as a Product Information File. With both behind you, you are ready to start working with clients.
Your first cases are signed off before you make anything. Your Client Formulation Plans and consultation forms go to your tutor first, and only once they have been reviewed do you proceed to make. Any scope or safety concern brings you back to full review.
Insurance and eligibility. You arrange your own cover before any live client contact. Case study clients must be eighteen or over, not pregnant or trying to conceive, and without a serious or life-threatening condition. Those limits belong to the training rather than the discipline: a qualified Practitioner may support someone living with a serious condition alongside their clinical care, and the restriction lifts on qualification and appropriate cover.
You source your own case study clients, and Purodem provides guidance on finding volunteers.
Casework runs across roughly nine to twelve months. Four clients seen six times each at weekly to fortnightly intervals is months of real contact, and it moves at the pace real clients move at.
Personal tutor support throughout. Every lesson ends with an application task your tutor reads and responds to individually, close to eighty of them across the full pathway.
An Initial Tutorial to set your direction. Once you have returned your induction paperwork and Personal Development Profile, you have a one-to-one with your tutor. They learn what you want from the qualification, set your first tasks, and agree a target for you to reach before the next tutorial. Your pacing is set with a person, not by a calendar.
Sign-off before you make. At Level 4, your Client Formulation Plans are reviewed before you make anything for a client. Your tutor also observes you making in each of the four formulation bases at least twice.
Full access to the Purodem Academy. Course content, student groups, and discussion forums on our distance learning platform, so you can study from anywhere.
HD video tutorials and filmed practical demonstrations, so you can watch a technique properly rather than read about it.
Downloadable workbooks and supporting resources to work through and keep.
Study on any device. Desktop, iPhone, iPad, and Android, so your course and your student community travel with you.
Structured, guided learning. Each lesson ends with a knowledge check and a tutor-reviewed task, and each module with a formal assessment. Eleven module assessments across the pathway, all internal, all included.
No external examination. Assessment is continuous and internal, with no separate examining body to register with and no additional exam fee at the end.
Certification on completion. Both qualifications were submitted to Purodem’s insurers and approved, and are designed so that you can obtain appropriate professional insurance to practise.
Course access runs from enrolment: twelve months for Level 3, twenty-four months for Level 4, and thirty-six months for the full pathway. The pathway is around two years of study, so the access period is a generous maximum rather than a target, and you keep access to the learning materials for the remainder of your period after you finish.
Integrative Therapeutic Formulation is a non-medical, complementary discipline. This boundary is built into the way the discipline is taught and practised. Practitioners learn to understand where their scope begins and ends, because being clear about that boundary allows them to practise safely and with confidence.
The boundary is determined by what the practitioner does, not simply by the condition or diagnosis a person may be living with. A diagnosis does not, in itself, place someone inside or outside the scope of Integrative Therapeutic Formulation. A practitioner may therefore support the wider wellbeing of someone living with a health condition or receiving medical care, alongside that care, without diagnosing, prescribing or attempting to medically treat the condition.
The Diploma supplements your existing professional capability rather than replacing it, so two graduates holding the same Diploma may work to different operational scopes depending on the wider professional scope each already holds.
Learning to communicate accurately about what a formulation supports, without overclaiming, is taught as a core professional skill.
The prospectus covers the regulatory frameworks you will work within and what each kind of professional insurance covers
Deana created the Integrative Therapeutic Formulation qualification, developed alongside the Purodem team. She brings more than twenty years of experience in aromatherapy, natural and plant-based product formulation, and professional education, and holds a professional teaching qualification.
She also built a practice on this way of working. From the early 2000s she ran a therapy business in Surrey, UK, beginning with treatments in clients’ homes and opening a salon in 2006. What grew that business was not the treatments but the products: bespoke skincare made for individual clients, formulated around what each of them needed. That became the main reason people came, and it is the same work this qualification teaches.
As Purodem’s Director of Education and Quality, Deana leads the development and delivery of its professional training and is head tutor on the Integrative Therapeutic Formulation qualification.
*Full pathway, Level 3 and Level 4
Fees cover all course materials, video tutorials, tutor support, all assessments, and certification at both levels. There is no external examination and no separate exam fee.
Beyond the course fee, you source your own ingredients, materials, and packaging. At Level 4 you will also need your own professional insurance in place before beginning client casework.
*If taken as separate enrolments, the two levels come to £2,690. The full pathway is priced as one qualification because that is how it is designed to be taken, and because committing to both from the start means your route can be planned as a whole from your first tutorial.
It covers both levels module by module, the casework in full, assessment, insurance, and the regulatory context.
We will email the prospectus to you, along with occasional information about Integrative Therapeutic Formulation. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Level 3 is the entry point of this qualification rather than a measure of how experienced you are, and no prior qualification is required to begin there. You do not need a scientific background either; the anatomy, physiology and formulation science are taught from the ground up. What the course does assume is a willingness to work with structure, with definitions, principles and a framework, rather than with intuition alone.
Route A: the full pathway. Begin at Level 3 and progress to Level 4. No prior qualification required. This is how the qualification is designed and how most people take it.
Route B: direct entry to Level 4. For experienced practitioners already formulating and working with clients. It requires a relevant existing qualification and an admission interview, where we look at your formulation experience and your client-facing practice. You are not expected to arrive knowing the discipline: Level 4 opens by establishing its principles, scope, and reasoning framework for everyone.
Level 3 on its own. Some people want the grounding without the practitioner casework, usually to bring the discipline into a practice they already have. The Foundation Award stands on its own and is a valid destination.
Not sure which applies? Tell us where you are starting from and we will help you decide.
In most cases, yes. Level 3 is where the discipline itself is taught, and however senior your existing qualification, it could not have covered this because the discipline did not exist. Nothing you already hold is repeated or wasted. The prospectus sets out the reasoning in full.
Experienced practitioners already formulating and already working with clients. The admission interview looks at both, rather than at which certificates you hold.
Predominantly, yes. Most of what you work with is natural and plant-based: vegetable oils, hydrolats, essential oils, plant extracts and CO₂ extracts. You also learn to work with clays, minerals, humectants, emulsifiers and preservatives, because a formulation built around what a person actually needs sometimes requires them.
No. Essential oils are one ingredient group within a wider palette rather than the organising principle. If you are already an aromatherapist, the qualification extends what you do rather than repeating it.
Formulation is the discipline here rather than a specialism within aromatherapy, which is why it sits just as well alongside massage, yoga, nursing or beauty work.
No, and it is not intended to become one. The discipline is non-medical and complementary. Practitioners do not diagnose, prescribe, or treat, and the course teaches exactly where that line falls.
Level 4 graduates are Practitioners and work with clients within the scope set out above, with appropriate insurance. Level 3 graduates are trained in the discipline and work within known-user and existing-practice contexts.
The pathway is around two years of study, and you have thirty-six months’ access from enrolment. Level 4 casework alone runs across roughly nine to twelve months, because it moves at the pace real clients move at. If you need longer than your access period, extensions are considered individually.
Yes, and it is designed for people who are already working. Your pacing is agreed with your tutor at your Initial Tutorial and reviewed as you go, so targets are set around your circumstances rather than a fixed timetable.
Yes. Level 3 stands on its own, and you can enrol on Level 4 afterwards as a separate enrolment at the Level 4 price current at that time. The pathway price is only available when you enrol on both together at the outset.
A Level 5 Advanced Diploma is in development for those who want to go further later on.
Send your name and email and we will be in touch about the next enrolment dates. We will answer whatever you want to ask, talk through which route suits you, and send you the enrolment links whenever you are ready.
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