The EFP is financed by the European Commission DG Research. It is part of a series of initiatives intended to provide a ‘Knowledge Sharing Platform’ for policy makers in the European Union. More information on the EFP and on the Knowledge Sharing Platform is provided at www.foresight-platform.eu Weak Signals and Emerging Issues in Health EFP Brief No. 198 Authors: Petra Schaper-Rinkel Petra.Schaper-Rinkel@ait.ac.at Ozcan Saritas ozcan.saritas@mbs.ac.uk Brian Warrington brian.warrington@gov.mt Victor van Rij v.vanrij@awt.nl Sponsors: EU Commission Type: EU-level single issue foresight exercise Organizer: FP7 SESTI Project Coordinator: TNO, Maurits Butter maurits.butter@tno.nl Duration: Oct 08 – Mar 11 Budget: N/A Time Horizon: 2025 Date of Brief: April 2011 Purpose This foresight activity was conducted as part of the EU FP7 SESTI project (Scanning for Emerging Science and Technol- ogy Issues) aimed at developing a process that can be used to identify weak signals and emerging issues in a system- atic, efficient and effective way. It also pursued the application and implementation of such techniques by contextualizing them and initiating discussions within the policy arena, thus linking them in a meaningful way to existing policy processes. To enhance the quality of the comparison of the different weak signal scanning approaches, the content domain was lim- ited to signals that are precursors to changes in the research and innovation system. This policy brief reports on the ap- proach and findings of the SESTI project on the health theme. Demographics, New Technologies and Patient Empowerment Countries have been facing increasing pressure on health service budgets due to a number of factors. This trend is projected to accelerate over the coming years, and countries are desperately looking for ways of limiting expenditure without reducing the quality of services or their accessibility. The most significant factors driving the change are: • Demographic and societal change. The age- ing population has profound implications for the cost of health and social services. • Health informatics and telemedicine. ICT is changing the face of healthcare. ICT systems are revolutionising information sharing between health professionals, for example through the development of seamless electronic patient re- cords. This requires the implementation, mainte- nance and upgrading of a sophisticated infra- structure with all the investment that this entails. • New health technologies. New pharmaceuticals and techniques are continually being developed leading to a broader range of treatments applied on a routine basis resulting in additional medical costs. But new health technologies can also con- tribute to decreasing costs, at least in the mid to long run. Better early diagnostics (enabling cures at an early stage), self-monitoring of health func- tions, robotic assistance (enabling the elderly to live on their own for a longer time or assisting medical and nursing personnel) and modern pros- thetics (enabling disabled people to work more ef- ficiently) can improve efficiency and reduce costs over time (Braun et al 2009, p 22).