‘Cancer crisis’: Experts warn of impending global shortage of radiology professionals

Experts are warning of an impending “cancer crisis,” with the global healthcare workforce facing dire shortages of professionals in radiology and other specialties. 

Researchers officially released the new report on Sunday, May 31, as part of the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting in Chicago. They utilized all available data on 17 common cancers and 18 workforce personnel types to project staffing needs through 2050, publishing their work in The Lancet Oncology. 

Based on their analysis, scientists are predicting the healthcare workforce will be short by about 100 million professionals by then. The largest shortfalls are expected in nursing (about 65 million) and radiology and pathology (about 16 million), with Africa and Asia most impacted. 

“Our global initiative brings a clear warning: Without urgent action to address critical workforce shortages, we risk a cancer crisis unlike anything we’ve seen before,” radiologist Hedvig Hricak, MD, co-lead of the commission and chair emeritus of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center’s Department of Radiology, said in a statement. “We call for immediate, country-specific strategies, smarter workforce use, task-shifting and AI/digital health adoption, alongside future-ready education and strong, sustainable financing through public-private partnerships.”

The report, titled “The Lancet Oncology Commission on Cancer Workforce: A Global Crisis” was produced by an international team of experts in radiology and other specialties. They’re predicting a 75% increase in cancer incidence by 2050. This translates to about 35 million people diagnosed with cancer annually, with about 19 million estimated deaths. Over 70% of these new cancer cases will occur in low- and middle-income countries, the commission found. Currently, about 1 in 3 cancer cases are undiagnosed worldwide. 

By 2050, experts are predicting a global shortage of approximately 725,000 radiologists, with Africa (275,000) and Asia (389,000) most heavily impacted. North America, meanwhile, is projected to be short about 2,000 radiologists by then, while Europe faces a shortfall of about 11,000. The commission also is projecting a global shortage of about 3.1 million radiologic technologists and technicians by 2050 (with a 0 figure for North America). Other imaging-related professionals expected to face shortfalls include nuclear medicine physicians (125,000 globally and 2,000 in North America), radiation oncologists (154,000/3,000), and MRI technologists (940,000/4,000)

Experts are calling for increased implementation of digital health and AI solutions—particularly for workflow management and pattern recognition in imaging and pathology—to help address these trends. Their modeling projects that the largest reduction in cancer mortality by workforce segment would be achieved by scaling up the number of diagnostic specialists, including radiologists, nuclear medicine physicians and rad techs. This would result in approximately 35 million cancer deaths averted between 2030 and 2050. 

A “comprehensive, financially sustainable scale-up” of workforce capacity for all personnel types could decrease cancer-related mortality by about 40% worldwide, the authors project. This would result in about 170 million cancer deaths averted during the 20-year period, yielding $120 trillion (USD) in net economic benefit. Experts estimate that every $1 spent on cancer care would result in a roughly $4 return on investment. They also are calling for prioritization of imaging workforce needs in country healthcare plans, including establishing recruitment and training programs to provide key staffers needed in imaging.

Study co-author Mark Lawler called the study’s result’s “sobering” during remarks at the ASCO Congress in Chicago. 

“Make no mistake; this is a wake-up call, no matter where you are in the world,” said Lawler, who is a professor of digital health at Queen’s University Belfast, Ireland. “What we’ve uncovered is shocking—how can we reconcile a 15 million increase in cancer cases diagnosed with a 100 million decrease in cancer staffing? The data unfortunately do not lie. We can’t wait until 2050 to see if our projections are correct—we must act now.”