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      Collaborative networking and support for medical physics development in low and middle income (LMI) countries

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          Abstract

          Medical physics is one of the key aspects of contemporary medicine, primarily focused on the safe and effective use of medical imaging and radiotherapy equipment. The number of medical physicists and their activities are directly related to the national/regional healthcare provision. The distribution of the medical physics workforce however is still very uneven—more than 70% of all medical physicists are in North America and Europe, serving the healthcare provision of about 1 billion people. The remaining 30% of medical physicists serve the healthcare provision of the rest of the world—serving about 6.5 billion people. A number of activities were taken by various teams and organisations to address this issue. The increase of quality of healthcare and the effectiveness of medical technology usage, lie in adequate education and training for medical physicists and engineers, who are the front-liners when it comes to dealing with technology in healthcare. To help LMI countries professional growth in the field of medical physics and technology, we developed an education and capacity building strategy, based on the revolutionary application of digital resources combined with experience sharing through large international network.

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          Most cited references11

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          Expanding global access to radiotherapy.

          Radiotherapy is a critical and inseparable component of comprehensive cancer treatment and care. For many of the most common cancers in low-income and middle-income countries, radiotherapy is essential for effective treatment. In high-income countries, radiotherapy is used in more than half of all cases of cancer to cure localised disease, palliate symptoms, and control disease in incurable cancers. Yet, in planning and building treatment capacity for cancer, radiotherapy is frequently the last resource to be considered. Consequently, worldwide access to radiotherapy is unacceptably low. We present a new body of evidence that quantifies the worldwide coverage of radiotherapy services by country. We show the shortfall in access to radiotherapy by country and globally for 2015-35 based on current and projected need, and show substantial health and economic benefits to investing in radiotherapy. The cost of scaling up radiotherapy in the nominal model in 2015-35 is US$26·6 billion in low-income countries, $62·6 billion in lower-middle-income countries, and $94·8 billion in upper-middle-income countries, which amounts to $184·0 billion across all low-income and middle-income countries. In the efficiency model the costs were lower: $14·1 billion in low-income, $33·3 billion in lower-middle-income, and $49·4 billion in upper-middle-income countries-a total of $96·8 billion. Scale-up of radiotherapy capacity in 2015-35 from current levels could lead to saving of 26·9 million life-years in low-income and middle-income countries over the lifetime of the patients who received treatment. The economic benefits of investment in radiotherapy are very substantial. Using the nominal cost model could produce a net benefit of $278·1 billion in 2015-35 ($265·2 million in low-income countries, $38·5 billion in lower-middle-income countries, and $239·3 billion in upper-middle-income countries). Investment in the efficiency model would produce in the same period an even greater total benefit of $365·4 billion ($12·8 billion in low-income countries, $67·7 billion in lower-middle-income countries, and $284·7 billion in upper-middle-income countries). The returns, by the human-capital approach, are projected to be less with the nominal cost model, amounting to $16·9 billion in 2015-35 (-$14·9 billion in low-income countries; -$18·7 billion in lower-middle-income countries, and $50·5 billion in upper-middle-income countries). The returns with the efficiency model were projected to be greater, however, amounting to $104·2 billion (-$2·4 billion in low-income countries, $10·7 billion in lower-middle-income countries, and $95·9 billion in upper-middle-income countries). Our results provide compelling evidence that investment in radiotherapy not only enables treatment of large numbers of cancer cases to save lives, but also brings positive economic benefits.
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            Medical physics workforce: A global perspective

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              Global number of medical physicists and its growth 1965–2015

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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                ms_stoeva@yahoo.com
                Journal
                Health Technol (Berl)
                Health Technol (Berl)
                Health and Technology
                Springer Berlin Heidelberg (Berlin/Heidelberg )
                2190-7188
                2190-7196
                9 September 2021
                : 1-7
                Affiliations
                [1 ]GRID grid.13097.3c, ISNI 0000 0001 2322 6764, King’s College London, ; London, UK
                [2 ]GRID grid.35371.33, ISNI 0000 0001 0726 0380, Medical University of Plovdiv, ; Plovdiv, Bulgaria
                [3 ]International Union for Physical and Engineering Sciences in Medicine (IUPESM), York, UK
                Author information
                http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4327-0409
                Article
                591
                10.1007/s12553-021-00591-1
                8425999
                34518791
                8acfc170-cc1d-4270-8743-4379e88eef6b
                © IUPESM and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2021

                This article is made available via the PMC Open Access Subset for unrestricted research re-use and secondary analysis in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for the duration of the World Health Organization (WHO) declaration of COVID-19 as a global pandemic.

                History
                : 11 August 2021
                : 19 August 2021
                Categories
                Original Paper

                medical physics,medical engineering,iupesm,low and middle income countries,education and training

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