future scenarios in the uk healthcare
Healthcare funding review research report 5
October 2000
Summary
The main drivers influencing future healthcare scenarios can be summarised as:
- social and demographic changes such as the ageing population and growing inequalities
- increased public expectations, resulting from shifting power structures and economic growth
- environmental concerns, including the health impacts of air quality, water quality, transport patterns and food shortages
- technological developments
- funding mechanisms
Considering the long term options for funding healthcare in the UK should be informed by a basic understanding of how the need and demand for, and provision of, that healthcare might change. The aim of this paper is to summarise the trends most likely to have a significant effect on healthcare in the next few decades. A comprehensive review of literature relevant to this topic would be well beyond the scope of the paper. It is therefore based primarily on recent studies of future scenarios in healthcare, focusing primarily on the UK, Canada and the USA.
The World Health Organization summarises the different purposes for which a futures study might be undertaken1:
- to ‘predict’ future developments
- to provide early warning of potentially threatening developments, or potential opportunities
- to stimulate learning processes, imaginative thinking and creative design for the future
- to enable people to determine the future they prefer
- to explore a range of alternative policy options
- to support strategic policy development.