3 systematising personal experiences of the authors and active participation in leading European organi¬sations and research networks that allowed gathering expert information from a wide range of sources, mainly comprising: health workforce planning in the Netherlands led by NIVEL; health labour market mon¬itoring and planning models in the federal states of Hessen and Rhineland Palatine in Germany; consul¬tancy and research collaboration with WHO Euro and the European Observatory on Health Systems and Poli¬cies; membership in EU research networks, such as the FP7 COST action on ‘Medicine and Management’; Euro¬pean Health Management Association (EHMA) Working Group on ‘Health Workforce’; and European Public Health Association (EUPHA) section on ‘Health Services Research’.