Health Horizons
For more than 30 years IFTF’s Health Futures research has brought futures thinking to the world of health and health care by looking for unexpected connections across this variety of stakeholders. Our research explores the social, scientific, economic and technological forces affecting health and grounds them with a deep understanding of the lives of individuals and families. By sensing connections between large-scale change and individual lives, we help organizations develop strategic insights and long-range initiatives to transcend boundaries and create person-centered approaches to supporting health and well-being.
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Visit the Health Futures Lab website
Contact Sean Ness at sness@iftf.org or 650-233-9517
What if you could make the invisible visible?
Myriad minutiae in our environments impact our health in countless ways. While we can look at this from many perspectives,...
Give Me a McStatin with Cheese
In what really is not a joke (though is likely a provocation), a group of British physicians published an article in the American Journal of Cardiology last week arguing that fast food companies should start packaging statins with their burgers and...
69 Design Ideas For Our Future Health
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Design ideas are pouring in. People from over 15 countries around the world have entered BodyShock. Themes range from novel visualizations and behavior change games to accessible...
I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't let you send that email
Suppose you manage a sales team. Of course you don't want them coming across as angry or anxious or pushy. Now suppose, instead, that you could screen the tone of your sales team's emails to make sure that they're only happy and helpful. Would you do it?
This isn't exactly the premise of the service Tone Check, a new Outlook plug-in developed by a...
Science—coming soon to a garage near you
Here in Silicon Valley, the lore—and allure—of the garage model for innovation is strong. I've heard it said, "It has been successful for IT and hardware . . . let's try bio!" Last month, my colleague, Alex Carmichael, highlighted a fledgling organization called BioCurious in a post entitled...
How to Program Your Immune System
He's at it again. Kary Mullis, the winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the invention of the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR), is on a quest. He has already revolutionized the field of molecular biology with PCR - now he wants to hack our immune systems to save us all from infectious disease.
It's a surprisingly simple, powerful solution that Mullis calls Altermune.
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Contagion health continues to spread
Over the last couple of years, we've been interested in the idea that health spreads—for better or worse—through our social networks, and the tremendous potential this understanding has for designing networked-based interventions for optimized health results. Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler have published some seminal work in this area, using the rich data available from the...
How To Grow A New Joint Inside Your Body
Say you have arthritis, as 80 million Americans do. Your hip has degenerated to the point that you have trouble walking, or standing for too long, or even sitting for too long.
Your doctor gives you a choice. She can replace your hip with a ball-and-socket joint made of metal and plastic, or she can try a new procedure that lets your body regrow a new hip joint from your own cells....
Crowd-Tracking Noise and Air Pollution
A new noise/ozone sensor watch being tested in Europe.
At the recent Health Horizons conference, we talked about the future of Crowdsourced Research, especially when it...
The Geneticist Will Skype you Now
One of the more startling statistics I learned last year came from something by geneticist and science writer Misha Angrist: At least as of a couple years ago, there were roughly as many board-certified physician-geneticists as astronauts in the United States....
What If Your Genetics Defined Your Community?
Imagine a world where people band together in activism around their genetic makeup. They wear real-time sensors, share their biomarker data with each other, influence...
Filtering Out Temptations
When was the last time you looked into the refrigerator or at a store shelf with every intention of grabbing a healthy snack--only to wind up with dessert? The problem, of course, is that even while salad might sound good in theory, in practice, in the moment, chocolate sounds a lot better now. But, what if you could filter out the tempting but unhealthy foods, and only see dessert?...
15 Ideas to Improve Global Health
If you imagine a healthy future, what does it look like? What will we have done to our bodies, networks, and environments to improve our collective well-being?
Last month, we...
Previewing Your Future Self
A few months ago, I highlighted a treadmill at Japanese gyms that flashes pictures of desserts at exercisers as they hit certain calorie counts in order to keep them motivated. Want that milkshake? Just run another half hour.
At the time, I was struck by its resemblance, at least in spirit, to my favorite artifact from the future from our...
Take the Genetic Test for Longevity
What if there was a simple spit test you could do that would predict how long you are likely to live? Would you want to know?
Having this kind of test may be closer than we think. A study done by researchers at the Boston University School of Medicine was just published in Science to show 33...
Is That Your Wallet in Your Pocket or Are You Just Happy to See me?
Via PSFK, I came across three concept designs for wallets from MIT's Media Lab that would offer real-time feedback on our spending habits. For example, the "Mother Bear" concept wallet would have a hinge on it "with a...
Longer Lives Make Suicide a More Popular Option
I was presenting some of the forecasts from our recently released HC2020 map last week when I saw a detail in one the map that I had never seen before. Check out this image from the map--something we call an artifact from the future--that highlights our forecast for neurointerventions:
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HH2010-The Future of Science, Technology, and Well-being 2020 Forecast Map
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...
IFTF Announces the Release of its Health and Health Care 2020 Signals & Forecasts Map
The Health Horizons Program has been mapping the landscape of challenges and responses for health and health care in 2020. We have been looking ahead over the next decade because the future of health and health care seems more uncertain then ever before. In 2009, we looked systematically at these challenges and responses to develop our HC2020 Map charting signals and forecasts of the direction...
