On November 2nd and 3rd, the Second Meeting of the WHO Sub-Regional Network for Western Europe took place in Venice, dedicated to the theme “Transforming the Health Workforce for Upstream Care, Innovation and AI”. Ricardo Rosado, a senior technician at ACSS and the WHO National Focal Point for Health Human Resources, participated representing Portugal in a panel on health workforce priorities for the next five years. The meeting brought together countries from the region to exchange experiences on how to guide health systems towards prevention, strengthening primary healthcare, innovation, and artificial intelligence, as well as workforce sustainability.
In his intervention, Ricardo Rosado argued that the main challenge is not just the lack of professionals, but the growing mismatch between the existing workforce, how it is organized and distributed, and the health needs of the populations. He also stressed that the sustainability of human resources is inseparable from the sustainability of the care model, and identified three challenges for Portugal: strengthening primary and community healthcare, improving the distribution of professionals across territories, care levels, and functions, and better leveraging existing skills through multidisciplinary teams and task sharing.
As a priority for the next five years, strategic and prospective workforce planning was discussed as a permanent function of health system governance. This planning is based on reliable information, models that combine supply and needs, and mechanisms that translate evidence into decisions on training, distribution, and investment.
