Futures Study in Health: A Review Study

Abstract

Background: Future is being continuously created at any moment and never stops. By reviewing the future, it can be discovered, evaluated and assessed to create desirable future. The health sector is daily faced with a variety of threats at different environmental, social, cultural, economic and political scales. To deal efficiently with these threats, it is necessary to use the future as an opportunity to promote people's health by investigating, anticipating and building it, and managing it properly. Therefore, this review was conducted with the aim of determining the domains and methods of future studies in the health sector.

Methods: In this review article, searching was performed by terms futures study or forecasting or fore sighting and health sector in four  databases consisting of Two Persian databases Magiran and the Scientific Information Database and Two English ones Google Scholar and PubMed. In the first search, 531 articles were selected and retrieved. After the titles and abstracts were read and duplicate articles were excluded, and then the full texts of the remaining articles were reviewed, seven articles were included in the final analysis.

Results: The results of studies in the health sector show that future studies is an important tool and evidence for policy makers in almost all areas of the health system's functions, such as determining the amount and types of services needed, training specialists and other health sector’s staff, allocating funds, the number of beds and other facilities, developing and constructing of hospital wards, etc.

Conclusion: The results of studies in the health sector indicate that futures study provide important tools and evidence for policymakers in almost all areas of the health system's functions, such as determining the amount and types of services needed, allocating funds, number of beds, expansion of hospital departments, technology requirements, the impact of policies and programs.

Keyword: Futures Study, Foresight, forecasting, Health