ideasIdea

An open global model of cancer workforce supply and demand by country

No one knows exactly how many oncologists, nurses, physicists and pathologists each country has or needs. A public, regularly updated model would let governments plan training and spot shortfalls years ahead.

Estimates of oncology workforce density are scattered across surveys and often a decade old. An open model combining registry burden (GLOBOCAN), treatment utilisation rates, professional-body registers, and training-pipeline data would project supply and demand by profession and country to 2040 and would show the effect of training decisions. The model would be maintained as a public good with annual updates.

Hypothesis

Countries using the model to set training quotas will reduce the projected 2035 shortfall in at least two professions by more than 20% relative to business-as-usual, as measured by subsequent registration data.

Rationale

Health workforce planning models exist for nurses and physicians in general; oncology has the burden and utilisation data needed but has never assembled them.

What would test it

Build and publish the model; validate historical projections against current registers in ten countries; track policy uptake and quota changes.

Maturity

speculative

Who has to act

data

Cost to try

Small (under $1M)

Years to first evidence

Bottlenecks it attacks

Not enough oncologists, nurses, pathologists, physicists · The number of people with cancer is rising faster than the workforce trained to treat them.
Data silos · Records, scans, genomes and outcomes sit in separate systems that cannot talk. Every patient's experience is lost to the next.

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An open global model of cancer workforce supply and demand by country

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