Institute For The Future

As health has moved out of hospitals and doctor’s offices into more diverse areas of our lives, we’ve witnessed a shift from treating patients to meeting consumer demands in a broader well-being economy. Over the next decade, the well-being economy will expand beyond the product lines and services we see today and create new jobs, skills and responsibilities.

As this expansion of well-being work takes shape, the roles and responsibilities of patients, consumers, caregivers, and providers will be up for grabs, creating space for new health authorities to emerge and for players throughout the landscape to recreate the basic elements of work in a well-being economy.

In our 2013 Health Horizons research, we examined four emerging sources of authority—computation, narratives, networks, and ambience—that will fundamentally transform who we trust and what interventions will be available in a rapidly expanding health and well-being marketplace.

Reworking Health Map

IFTF’s Health Horizons Program created this ten-year forecast map to orient you to a decade in which a variety of forces are destabilizing our traditional relationships in health, and creating new tools and opportunities to intervene. Use it as a tool to inform and inspire your thinking about how to augment your current health work—and innovate new kinds of responses. Download now »

12 Forecast Videos

In 2013, we created a brief, thought-provoking video to explore each of the 12 forecasts from our Reworking Health research. Beginning in July 2014, we publicly released one forecast video per week via a series of blog posts that reveal new opportunities and will help you to imagine what skills and capacities you or your organization can develop to rework health in the coming decade. Explore the 12 forecast videos »

Check out this 2 min. video on Amplifying the Positive:

4 Forecast Perspectives

Four forecast perspectives depict how four critical skills—measurement, empathy, cooperation, and design—will be applied by traditional and emerging stakeholders to improve health and well-being over the next decade.

• MEASUREMENT: The Creative Search for Metrics That Matter (PDF)
• EMPATHY: The Rise of Technologies to Expand Emotional Connections (PDF)
• COOPERATION: Transcending Traditional Boundaries (PDF)
• DESIGN: The Personalization of Health (PDF)

8 Artifacts from the Future

From black market services to mitigate the effects of personal indulgences to microwork services for mental health, the 8 companion Artifacts from the Future depict the broad range of ways that health management will happen over the next decade:

• Patient Sense
• Indulgence Navigator
• Day Maker App
• Healthy Block Project
• REHIX
• EZ LIFT
• Meat Counter
• Certified Trauma Informed

Like all of IFTF’s Artifacts from the Future, these images offer insights into future everyday lives and are intended to give you an immersive look at a possible future change.