Recent Publications
This set of Health Horizons forecast perspectives offers a view of six key areas of experimentation that operate across the scales of bodies, networks, and environments. These experiments emerge as responses to six key questions shaping health and well-being.
Why Time Matters by Kathi Vian
New research into our bodies’internal clocks is revealing that personal timing mechanisms shape the effects...
The Workforce Board of the North Valley Job Training Consortium (NOVA) sponsored an IFTF forecast on the workforce of the future. IFTF Research Director Rachel Maguire outlines critical health and health care trends that will affect the health care labor market in the next decade. Leveraging IFTF's previous research on emerging trends in health care and information technologies, the...
In 2010, we at the Institute for the Future discussed a vision to create a contest that would ask people to enter and vote for ideas on how to transform our bodies and lifestyles for future health—a topic closely related to IFTF’s Health Horizons research.
The result was the BodyShock The Future competition that was held at www.bodyshockthefuture.org. Over 100 entries were...
Building on our Map of the Future of Science, Technology, and Well-Being, this series of forecasts explores in greater depth resources for expanding our capacities for well-being. The overview, Building Capacities for Well-Being, presents a framework for thinking strategically about responding to the challenge of transforming bodies and lifestyles.
Embedded Health...
Our 2010 Artifacts from the Future are new, thought-provoking visual representations of possible responses to the challenge of transforming bodies and lifestyles. These artifacts offer plausible depictions of health interventions at the scale of bodies, networks, and environments that will enhance our capacity for well-being. You will be able to use these artifacts to jump-start strategic...
Transforming bodies and lifestyles is a complex challenge facing global health over the next decade: the impacts of the burden of chronic diseases, an aging population, and steep social expectations for healthy lifestyles create an area ripe for innovative responses. The goal is larger than achieving health: it is building well-being. Sickness and well-being are not just opposites; they will co-...
Science and technology (S&T) are always advancing. But what will matter over the next decade is how technical abilities and scientific perspectives converge to fight illness and build well-being. This ten-year forecast map, The Future of Science, Technology, and Well-being, explores exciting convergences that are shaping how we respond to health challenges in powerful ways by opening up new...
In 2009, the Health Horizons Program undertook a year-long examination of the future of health and health care. We started our journey with the
HC2020 Signals & Forecasts
Map (SR-1231), which highlights some of the pressing challenges facing health and health care, along with key response strategies likely to shape the direction of change over the next ten years.
The HC2020 Perspectives (...
Green Health is emerging from the convergence of the global health economy and the growing public recognition of the imperative for global sustainability. This convergence is visible in the two distinct ways in which our concept of “health” has expanded. We are managing, preserving, andenhancing our health in ways that include underlying causes of well-being andthe interrelated systems of our...
Health Brands:
What?
The convergence of health and entertainment evolves into anew market category that creates novel opportunities for consumer electronics,retail, travel, and the media industries. New and well-established brands position themselves toward health as consumers look for an explicit link between market offerings and their personal health.
So What?
What brands emerge around...
