The Iowa Health Professions Tracking Center, operated by the Office of Statewide Clinical Education Programs (OSCEP), maintains continuous inventories of Iowa’s major health professions including physicians, pharmacists, dentists, physician assistants, and advanced practice nurses. Established in 1977, the Iowa Physician Information System served as the model for the creation of the other health professions tracking systems. In 1994, the Iowa General Assembly approved the Primary Care Initiative, a state supported program designed to augment the state’s efforts to produce primary care doctors. In 1995, the Primary Care Initiative was expanded and part of the funds were designated for the purpose of establishing and operating the Iowa Health Professions Inventory (IHPI), a database for continuous tracking of Iowa’s health professions workforce. IHPI contains demographic, educational, and professional information for over 15, 000 actively practicing Iowa health care providers. The inventory characterizes the health care workforce (eg, age, gender, and worksite), monitors trends, and facilitates research on the state’s health care workforce. Its benchmarking capacity enables users to track changes in supply and geographic distribution over time. The tracking system is monitored and updated on a continuous basis, incorporating changes in the workforce due to deaths, retirements, relocations, and new practitioners entering practice. IHPI enables users to chart specific trends, forecast changes in the state’s health professions workforce, characterize the workforce demographically, and gauge the return on the state’s investments in health professions education. Advisory committees for pharmacists, dentists, advanced practice nurses and physician assistants were established to guide development of their respective health professions tracking system. The advisory committees were essential to the initial design and development of the tracking systems.