Health Foresight provides insight into possible development trends in chronic diseases and the costs of health services
The Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) has launched the Health Foresight online service. Based on past development and possible future scenarios, the service offers forecasts related to population morbidity, functional capacity and work ability limitations as well as the risk factors affecting them, such as lifestyles.
The service can be used to examine, for example, forecasts of perceived health, multiple morbidity and psychological strain in the adult population. It also describes how morbidity would develop in the wellbeing services counties in different scenarios related to smoking, alcohol consumption and obesity. The situation can be examined in one wellbeing services county and in relation to the situation in the whole country. The situations in several wellbeing services counties can also be compared.
“Health Foresight offers a new way of examining how different development trends in risk factors would affect morbidity in a specific region. For example, it illustrates how many more people would develop an alcohol-related disease over the next 10 years if alcohol consumption remained at the current level rather than continuing to decrease,” says Laura Paalanen, Senior Researcher at THL.
Information helps to allocate resources effectively
Social welfare and health care expenditures are at risk of increasing as the average age of the population rises. However, the increase in service needs and costs can be curbed by reducing morbidity.
The service helps to plan the prevention of problems in wellbeing services counties.
“A good example of this is obesity, which is expected to become more common in all wellbeing services counties. Health Foresight allows the management of a wellbeing services county to estimate the related costs in their own area. Halting the increase in obesity could save nearly EUR 1.5 billion in health service and prescription medicine costs over 10 years at the national level in comparison to a situation in which obesity continued to become more prevalent,” says Jaakko Reinikainen, Senior Researcher at THL.
The service can be used in combination with the Population Health and Wellbeing Report 2025. The report provides a comprehensive situational picture of current health and wellbeing problems and suggests research-based solutions for solving them.
“In other words, the Health Foresight shows the direction in which diseases, work and functional capacity, lifestyles and risk factors can develop in each wellbeing services county, while the Population Health and Wellbeing Report outlines what measures can be taken to avoid unfavourable developments,” says Reinikainen.
Health Foresight online service and its content will be updated regularly.
Health Foresight was developed in the Sustainable Growth Programme for Finland (RRP), which is funded from the EU’s one-off economic recovery instrument (NextGeneration EU). The Sustainable Growth Programme for Finland supports ecologically, socially and economically sustainable growth.
Source
Health Foresight online service
Description of the Health Foresight online service in thl.fi (In Finnish)
Solutions for building a sustainable society. Population Health and Wellbeing Report 2025 (julkari.fi)
For more information
Laura Paalanen
Senior Researcher
THL
[email protected]
tel. +358 29 524 8816
Jaakko Reinikainen
Senior Researcher
THL
[email protected] tel. +358 29 524 7420
