Looking Ahead: What Will the Future Hold?

Kidneys, cars, and even a glass of wine generated from a printer? Driverless cars that could eliminate more than 31,000 deaths each year? Physicals from a smartphone? These are just a few of the ideas discussed by futurist, Thomas Frey in the National Meeting opening plenary. Frey, a powerful visionary, described how catalytic innovation is creating new industries. Frey stirred attendees’ imagination with his portrait of the near future and provided advice on keeping up with the rapidly evolving health care landscape. He iterated the importance of changing people’s vision of the future to change the way decisions are made today. Industries exist on a bell curve with a beginning, middle, and an end, he said, and most industries today are at their end. If Alliances want to sustain themselves, Frey said they must live in the future—and that future is coming to us much sooner than we think. “If your next project is not aligned with the problems, needs, and desires of the future, the future will kill it,” he said. Known as the “Father of Invention,” Frey laid the foundation for an exciting and forward thinking AF4Q National Meeting.