Why Health and Health Care 2020?
The United States faces a number of pressing challenges in health and health care. By 2020, if left unresolved, these challenges will not only lead to increased health insecurity but also to dramatic disruptions to our social, political, and economic systems. The United States spends more on medical care than on food or housing, yet more than 130 million people suffer from chronic illness. By 2020 the population aged 65 or older is projected to reach 55 million, but Medicare’s Trust Fund is expected to be insolvent by 2017. Nor are the challenges restricted to finance: despite recent efforts by educators, public health officials and the media, one in five American 4-year-olds is now obese.
Despite these grim realities, the future of health and health care is full of potential and possibility. Developments in commons, markets, policy, and science and technology will give shape to the coming decade. Already, stakeholders across the health care economy, enabled by advances in technology and medical science, are forging a new landscape of product offerings, health management strategies, and service delivery innovations.
What are these Scenario videos?
Set in 2020, the four scenarios tell stories of how individuals experience health and health care in four alternative worlds of growth, discipline, collapse and transformation. Based on four archetypes of change identified by Jim Dator of the Hawaii Research Center for Future Studies, we developed these internally consistent worlds based on those 'shapes' of the future. In looking at these four corners of possibility, we can identify threats, opportunities, challenges and responses that are less readily apparent and gain a more robust understanding of future directions of change in health and health care.
About the HC2020 Project
In 2009, health care will be at the top of our agenda. With the advent of personalized medicine, health-aware environments, and new mobile platforms for health, the landscape in which our current health care system operates is rapidly changing. The Institute for the Future’s Health Horizons Program has undertaken a year-long research program to explore future directions in health and health care in the United States. As we look out over the next decade to 2020, we will work with IFTF’s Foresight-Insight-Action framework to guide our journey.
At our first 2009 Health Horizon’s conference, IFTF presented our Health Care 2020 Scenarios, which focused on several broad strategic responses to the challenges health care faces in the years ahead. These scenarios map a range of possible approaches—markets, technology, commons, and policy—that will shape and define the future of health care in the United States.
During the summer of 2009 we are hosting a series of regional gatherings that will tap into the collective intelligence of a range of experts and stakeholders in health and health care. Using an open meeting format, we will ask our participants to work with our scenarios and indentify strategic implications for stakeholders across the global health economy. These meetings will take place in Chicago, Atlanta, and Silicon Valley and will provide Health Horizons members with new opportunities to work with IFTF forecasts and interact with IFTF researchers and networks.
In November 2009 we will reconvene at a strategic retreat where IFTF will host a series of discussions to explore several of the critical dilemmas and opportunities for transformation in health care over the next decade. Together we will work with our Health Care 2020 Toolkit for Action, our Health Care 2020 scenarios, and a series of forecast reports that will examine the short-, medium-, and long-term implications of the scenarios we unveiled in the spring. The retreat will feature a series of group processes to facilitate strategic decision-making and identify ways that your organization can take action in the present to respond to these potential transformations.
