An appropriately skilled workforce with the right mix of skills and roles is at the centre of a health system’s capacity to respond to a population’s changing health and care needs and is a major factor influencing how well systems perform. However, the evidence on the nature of the skills and roles required, their distribution and evolution over time, and their composition to ensure provision of ‘the right care in the right place at the right time’, is sketchy and there are significant conceptual and practical ‘gaps’. The Observatory aims to address these issues systematically and so provide decision- makers with a better understanding of and tools to address skill mix in a systematic way and to realize the potential of the health and care workforce along with service users and their carers. 

The Observatory’s workplan monitors skill-mix and task shifting innovations in primary and chronic care. This includes both country case studies and systematic reviews. An emphasis is currently placed on the following aspects: