Our Mission & Vision
To fulfill the healthcare needs of all Canadians by equipping students, professionals, and change-makers with the right tools to make data-driven decisions on workforce resource allocation.
What we doEmpowerment
Guiding our users to make informed, data-driven decisions.
Innovation
Dedicated to constantly improving and developing new solutions.
Collaboration
Working closely with our institutional partners and fulfilling user needs.
Integrity
Committed to honesty and transparency in all our practices.
Features
The Docforce Platform is a first-of-its-kind web-based tool that allows you to seamlessly interact with the most relevant public data on current and projected physician workforces across Canada.
The Largest Physician Workforce Dataset
Over 1 million unique data points spanning more than 60 medical specialties from 2015 onwards - all delivered straight to your fingertips.
Our Platform coalesces data from a variety of Canadian agencies, including: the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), the Canadian Medical Association (CMA), the Canadian Post-MD Education Registry (CAPER), the Canadian Resident Matching Service (CaRMS), the Ontario Medical Students’ Association (OMSA), and the Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI). All of this data is hosted publicly and free-of-cost.
Multi-View Interactivity
Intuitive data exploration that illustrates the most relevant public data on current and projected physician workforces across Canada.
- Table View: Comparative analysis of granular data
- Graph View: Trend visualization across time and between groups
- Map View: Interactive exploration of data across health regions
Workforce Predictive Analytics
Forecasting physician saturation rates to prevent and correct supply-demand mismatch.
Balancing accuracy, efficiency, and utility, our projection models predict the 3-year physicion-to-100,000 population ratio for every specialty, jurisdiction, and region that has data available for trend analysis. They also predict how competitive resident specialty matching will be up to 3 years in the future.
Additional Support & Resources
Providing you with information to help traverse the dense and tortuous jungle of Health Human Resources.
We regularly release and update resources on our Platform that are tailored to individual specialties and regions, in addition to sharing other useful data sources. Not to mention our repository of Program Director survey responses across Canada, who comment on the future outlook and evolution of their respective specialties.
Services
Our work is multi-discplinary and multi-purpose, aimed towards improving the physician workforce and being a force for positive change.
Research
Conducting pan-Canadian survey studies, writing large systematic reviews, and establishing novel workforce predictive models
Development
Our Platform undergoes continuous improvement, rapid deployment, and unabating innovation
Education
Informing medical students, hosting Webinars, and disseminating our findings at national/international conferences
Advocacy
Reaching out to government officials, regulatory bodies, and other stakeholders to promote and prioritize health human resources
Team
Michael Balas
Docforce President
Gopika Punchhi
Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry
Mursal Mohamud
Cumming School of Medicine
Cynthia van Dykhuizen
UBC Northern Medical ProgramFrequently Asked Questions
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How should I cite this platform?
Cite the original data source if any data point is used. You may also cite the following article: Bourcier D, Collins BW, Tanya SM, Basu M, Sayal AP, Moolla S, Dong A, Balas M, Molcak H, Punchhi G. Modernising physician resource planning: a national interactive web platform for Canadian medical trainees. BMC Health Services Research. 2022 Dec;22(1):1-5.
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How can I get involved?
Contact Michael Balas or any of the other members of Docforce. You can also send an email to [email protected]
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Why are some of the data points missing?
This either means the data is not available at the level you are viewing (e.g. available at the provincial but not the regional level) or that the data is not made publicly available. Missing data is denoted by a dash (-).
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When is the data updated and how often?
We update the platform as soon as we receive data from our insitutional partners and perform our quality checks. This typically occurs once annually in the Fall.
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How did you choose which medical specialties would be included?
Docforce defines medical specialties according to the definitions set out by the Canadian Institute of Health Information (CIHI). Of those, we included specialties that have at least five listed positions offered across Canada for either the residency match (R1), pediatric subspecialty match (PSM), medicine subspecialty match (MSM), or family medicine/enhanced skills match (FM/ES) (see CaRMS website for more details).