Medical laboratory workforce readiness and diagnostic capacity in Cameroon: protocol for a policy-oriented scoping review

Expansion of molecular and other advanced diagnostic technologies can increase laboratory capacity, but technology deployment alone does not establish a sustainable diagnostic system. Operating, maintaining, quality-assuring, digitally integrating, and continuously staffing advanced platforms depends on the workforce and institutional architecture surrounding them. Cameroon's 2022 National Laboratory Policy describes weaknesses across laboratory human resources, training, equipment maintenance, quality management, laboratory information systems, financing, and monitoring, while also setting out intended reforms. The policy's situation analysis draws on data collected before 2022. Consequently, policy commitments are treated as statements of intent rather than evidence of implementation. No consolidated map currently exists of what published and grey literature demonstrates about these interconnected domains in Cameroon. This review will map that evidence and assess the extent to which the available evidence supports, challenges, or leaves unresolved a conceptual proposition labelled "High-Tech, Hollow-Core." The proposition is that technology expansion may outpace the workforce, career structures, maintenance systems, quality systems, and digital infrastructure required to sustain advanced diagnostic capacity. The High-Tech, Hollow-Core proposition is an analytic framework, not an established finding.