Food + Drink, Beauty, Tech + Innovation, Retail, Lifestyle…JWT pulls out their crystal ball for 2016, and I see health, everywhere.
The Future 100 – Trends and Change to Watch in 2016 is J. Walter Thompson Intelligence Innovation Group’s annual trend forecast, which I highly value and mine each year to help THINK-Health continue to hone our own environmental analyses for health and healthcare. [Here’s what I wrote one year ago about JWT’s 2015 forecast].
Health is baked into JWT’s 2016 trendscape, well beyond their “Health” chapter.
Even the report’s introduction is health-flavored: “As forecasters, we’re watching the rapid metabolism of trends from food to beauty to tech as they move in a heartbeat from new to nearly new to over.”
In a nutshell, JWT finds that, “Wellbeing and future-proofing our bodies is also becoming nothing short of a global movement. As consumers, we’re investing in wearable tech, athleisure wear, wellness pursuits, mindfulness, buying farm-to-table, bean-to-bar, seed-to-skin, organic, fermented, probiotic, cold-pressed everything to ensure our continued good health….consumers are exchanging previously trusted products and brands for New Natural alternatives, from feminine care to fertility.”
Some of the high-level themes and insights impacting health/care in 2016 include:
- Empathy
- Un-tabooing womanhood
- Online universities (think MOOCs for health education and peer-to-peer healthcare)
- Self-healing materials
- Organs-on-chips
- Fashion+tech
- Sportspitality (the new-new gym)
- Neuromarketing (for behavior change)
- Instagram stories (for peer-to-peer healthcare)
- Ageless society
- Natural junk (food)
- New omnivores and flexitarian eating regimens
- Algae as a sustainable food (if it can overcome the “ick” factor)
- Ancient ingredients
- Beauty foods (see my Health Populi post on Helena Rubinstein’s concept of food for beauty here)
- New natural beauty
- Metabolism boosters
- Food temples in retail
- Next-level geo-targeting (with public health implications)
- Community stores
- Sound healing
- Stool banking
- Gamethletes (THINK: games for health bolstering self-care and health efficacy)
- and a host of Health-specific topics.
Health Populi’s Hot Points: Social determinants like food and housing and lifestyle directly and profoundly influence health more than healthcare services.
We know from our own project portfolio at THINK-Health the shift from healthcare to health that the health/care ecosystem is broadening well beyond the legacy healthcare players — hospitals, physicians, suppliers (especially pharma, biotech and medical devices). Look for collaborations and alliances between these organizations with trusted partners in food, technology, financial services, consumer electronics and retailers. The new-new pharmacy, in particular, will play an important bridging role in this expanding ecosystem.
2016 will usher in this new meaning of consumer-driven health/care.
One of the best aspects of my work is collaborating across the health/care ecosystem to address how health citizens can deal with health care costs and and care for families. I'm grateful to have collaborated with Fidelity on their research into this issue, 
I'm gratified to be named on 
I’m celebrating America’s 250th birthday both patriotically and professionally, honored that the NLM included my 2010 paper, “How Smartphones Are Changing Healthcare for Consumers and Patients” as one of 250 items curated for the digital archive of 250 Years of American Medicine.