**12. Conclusions**

Radiation therapy will play an important role for oncology care moving forward. With increasing evidence of the success treating patients with oligometastasis and refinement of tools for radiosurgery including protons, theranostics, and particle therapies, radiation oncology will remain an important component for patient care for decades to come in nearly all disease areas using sophisticated treatment strategies. An increasing number of patients with cancer are now treated with curative intent and the plans developed for these patients is becoming increasingly complex with varied normal tissue constraints, especially seen in patients requiring re-treatment. Many disease programs including breast and prostate are being treated with compressed fractionation, therefore there will be a decrease in the number of treatments, yet the number of plans will increase, and the complexity of each plan will increase. Therefore, the skill set of the planning teams will not resemble the skill set required for work a decade ago. Tomorrow's planning team will be fluent in AI for plan optimization and applied imaging/image fusion for target definition. Planning teams will require skill and knowledge to create sophisticated treatment plans in a timeframe required for timely care. Although an exciting new era for radiation oncology, the skill required for treatment planning and treatment execution is increasing and departments will need to provide educational resources to meet this need moving forward. Training programs will need to adapt to meet these evolving standards. The future of radiation oncology is strong; however, we must continue the process of selfimprovement to meet the needs of patients moving forward.
