Looking at the future of decision making in medicine and health

Through a programme of research and by engaging health professionals and the public, the Future Medical Decisions programme aims to build a toolset to improve decision making in medicine and health.

Programme Objectives    

• To enhance the capacity of policy makers, health professionals and the public to think more clearly about risk.
• To develop new tools to allocate scarce health resources more efficiently.
• To generate informed debate about the ways in which new technology may assist decision making in medicine.

These objectives are being addressed through three core activities:

Building the evidence

Future Medical Decisions is developing interconnected programmes of robust scientific research and ideas generation, identifying emerging trends in society, technology and medicine that will act as the most significant drivers of change in health care provision.  The evidence-building research activity is organised around five challenges.

Engaging policy makers, health professionals and the public

An important part of Future Medical Decisions is to engage people from all walks of life, to find out about their hopes, fears and priorities for medicine in the future.  Gathering representative opinions from all areas of society will ensure that the research programme is shaped not only by scientific evidence, but also by the values and aspirations of everyone with a stake in health care provision.

Alongside the five research challenges, Future Medical Decisions is building a programme of stakeholder engagement, linking up with policy makers, health care professionals and industry groups, through events and one-to-one consultations, to enable their input into the project.

Online resources for long-term planning and futures thinking

An online platform will be available to enable opinion leaders, policy makers and health professionals to make practical use of the evidence and ideas generated in the research programme, in order to make informed and effective decisions about health care provision at national, regional and local levels.

The platform will allow individuals to draw on social and technological information to plan for the future of health care.  It aims to inform and inspire people when undertaking planning or making long-term choices.

Last updated: 3 March 2009