Lisbon Office

Health Futures

The relevance of health futures to the central topic of healthcare quality is obvious to some but not to others. We would identify three substantial contributions that the one makes to the other:
• Futures work identifies the changing societal context that can have a major impact on the nature of healthcare delivery and the quality of care (e.g. the current global financial crisis)
• Review of potential health futures requires examination of the value systems underpinning our approach to health quality, health quality education and engagement with stakeholders in health (e.g. personal and societal responsibility, questions of quality of life etc.)
• Awareness of emerging transformation of health and of healthcare delivery challenges our thinking about the priorities associated with the ESQH mission, allowing ESQH to retain its leading edge position, one of its central areas of competence.
Aims of the Lisbon Office
• To facilitate the exchange of knowledge and information on health futures between ESQH members.
• To promote the work of ESQH within the United Kingdom and the work of the Lisbon Office within Europe.
• To develop a European observatory for health futures, by establishing a network of collaborators across Europe (initially, although it could subsequently be extended further). The observatory with its network would collect leading edge information on health scenarios; collect data on health innovation (over and above technological innovation) and aim to detecting faint signals that may represent precursors of emerging attractors within dissipative structures (using the application of complexity science to social organisations).