Health and Social Care Services

Scientific and technological advances in medicine promise to transform health and healthcare to become much more connected, precise and democratized, with significantly improved human outcomes. To comprehend the scope of scientific and technological breakthroughs and their potential impact on healthcare provision, the 2016-2018 Global Future Council on the Future of Health and Healthcare prepared this report to serve as a key resource in understanding the effect of the Fourth Industrial Revolution on health and medicine. The report seeks to characterize how this revolution will affect us in the coming decades and to discuss the societal implications and governance of key emerging technologies related to health and healthcare.

In September 2015, the UN General Assembly adopted the 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development, and migration features prominently in this Agenda.
The purpose of this collection of papers is first of all to draw attention to the many dimensions of the migratory experience covered by the SDGs and secondly, to offer practical suggestions as to how these aspects of migration can be addressed effectively during the implementation process.

Rising inequality and slow economic growth in many countries have focused attention on policies to support inclusive growth. While some inequality is inevitable in a market-based economic system, excessive inequality can erode social cohesion, lead to political polarization, and ultimately lower economic growth. This Fiscal Monitor discusses how fiscal policies can help achieve redistributive objectives. It focuses on three salient policy debates: tax rates at the top of the income distribution, the introduction of a universal basic income, and the role of public spending on education and health.

When regulating the digital health services, lawmakers are confronted to a difficult challenge-finding the right balance. Medical data and new technologies are both exciting and sensitive-On the one hand, their massive usage will help improve the quality of treatments and reduce the cost of our health services. On the other, they pose moral questions (e.g. the possible re-identification of the patient).
Ambition and Care must be the guidelines for the digital health services regulation. We do not give technical recommendations, but outline our advice along four strategic axes- Put the patient back at the heart of his/her medical data, Consolidate the infrastructure of medical data and use it to its full potential, Rethinking the regulation of the development and commercialization of digital health technologies, Strengthening the digital and data culture among physicians. For each of those axes, we propose concrete initiatives which will hopefully inspire the different actors of the health sector and help them in their decision-making.

This report brings together evidence about today’s older population, with future trends and projections, to identify the implications for the UK. This evidence will help government to develop the policies needed to adapt to an ageing population.

Asia Pacific (APAC)* is the fastest ageing region in the world with more than 200 million people expected to move into the ranks of the elderly (aged 65 years and above) between now and 2030. This represents an increase of 71 percent in the number of elderly people, compared to increases of 55 percent in North America and 31 percent in Europe over the same period.
Driven by improving socio-economic conditions and increasing life-expectancy, the speed at which societies in APAC are ageing poses an unprecedented challenge. For comparison, Singapore’s elderly population will rise from 11 to 20 percent in the next 15 years, while it took France 49 years to do the same. By 2030, Japan will become the world’s first “ultra-aged” nation, with the elderly accounting for more than 28 percent of the population, while Hong Kong, South Korea, and Taiwan will be considered “super-aged”, with more than 21 percent.
Many APAC countries are moving from a period when they reaped a “demographic dividend” to one where they face the prospect of paying a “demographic tax”. Such a significant demographic shift will be accompanied by a host of financial and socio-economic risks affecting multiple stakeholders, as shown in Exhibit A. Consequently, there is an urgent need to evaluate each country’s readiness to manage increasingly aged societies and to develop solutions that mitigate the associated risks. This report takes a deeper look into the impact of societal ageing on elderly healthcare costs in APAC.

The challenge of resilience in a globalised world discusses the concept of resilience from different perspectives and the role of science in the continuous process of building a resilient, stable, competitive and prosperous Europe.

Resilience is a fundamental prerequisite for Europe as the largest integrated economic area in the world and has an important social dimension which requires the active cooperation of all stakeholders; citizens, the private sector, governments and NGOs included.

Health at a Glance 2015 presents cross-country comparisons of the health status of populations and the performance of health systems in OECD countries, candidate countries and key emerging economies. This edition offers two new features: a set of dashboard indicators on health outcomes and health systems (presented in Chapter 1), which summarise the comparative performance of OECD countries; and a special chapter on recent trends in pharmaceutical spending across OECD countries. The key findings of this publication are as follows.

The Public Administration Select Committee (PASC) is carrying out an inquiry into Whitehall’s capacity to anticipate, to analyse, to assess, and to respond to the most significant challenges (risks and opportunities) facing the UK in the next decade or so. This includes scrutinising Whitehall capabilities for foresight and for reaction to the unforeseen, as well as the adequacy of current capabilities, the need for new capabilities in the future, and the conduct of strategy and leadership.