ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Rehabil. Sci.
Sec. Strengthening Rehabilitation in Health Systems
Volume 6 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fresc.2025.1617624
This article is part of the Research TopicAssistive Technology and Universal Health Coverage: Clinical and Educational ChallengesView all articles
Estimates of the global workforce required for providing assistive technology: A modeling study
Provisionally accepted
- 1Dalarna University, Falun, Sweden
- 2Department of Neurobiology, Care Sciences and Society, Karolinska Institutet (KI), Huddinge, Stockholm, Sweden
- 3SINTEF Digital, Trondheim, Sør-Trøndelag, Norway
- 4World Health Organization (Switzerland), Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland
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Introduction: Despite being a fundamental human right, access to assistive products varies between 3% and 90% across countries. Ensuring adequate and trained human resources is a prerequisite for improving access to assistive products. To support workforce planning and development, this study estimated the global workforce required for assistive technology provision to achieve a high level of access.Method: This modeling study used estimates of the primary workforce for assistive technology provision and assistive product needs in a country with a high level of access and global assistive product needs, to predict the global workforce required to provide assistive technology in five product domains: cognition and communication, hearing, mobility and self-care, orthotics and prosthetics, and vision. The assistive product need estimates were based on self-reported data from WHO Rapid Assistive Technology Assessment surveys in 28 countries.Results: A total workforce for assistive technology provision of 4.4 (95% CI: 3.0-6.8) million fulltime equivalents (FTE) would be required globally to achieve a high level of access to assistive products. Excluding the administrative workforce, this includes a workforce of 3.4 (2.3-5.4) million FTE, composed of 1.7 (1.3-2.2) million FTE providing mobility and self-care products, 0.9 (0.5-1.7) million FTE providing orthoses and prostheses, 0.5 (0.2-1.0) million FTE providing vision products, 0.3 (0.2-0.4) million FTE providing hearing products, and 0.05 (0.04-0.06) million FTE providing cognition and communication products.Likely a conservative estimate of the required workforce size, this provides a cautious foundation for informing strategies to develop a workforce capable of meeting global assistive product needs and improving access.
Keywords: Assistive products, Assistive Technology, Need, access, Workforce
Received: 24 Apr 2025; Accepted: 16 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Rosberg Petersson, Tistad, Muller, Calvo and Borg. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Johanna Rosberg Petersson, Dalarna University, Falun, Sweden
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