The World Innovation Summit for Health (WISH), a global initiative of Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development (QF), announced that a ‘behavioural insights’ forum will be held during its conference slated be held in November.
The behavioural insights forum will present groundbreaking, evidence-based research showing how citizen’s health can be maintained and improved through better understanding and application of the latest evidence on the factors which influence behaviour, led by a UK government-owned social purpose company, The Behavioural Insights Team.
Using a broad definition of health, the report will cover three main areas: quality of life and wellbeing, public health, and delivery of healthcare. It will further demonstrate how behavioural insights can be applied at the macro level of high-level policies and system design, as well as at the micro level of experimentation, to achieve incremental improvements for the benefit of societies.
David Halpern, chief executive of the Behavioural Insights Team and board director, and chair of the forum, said, “Behavioural factors such as diet, smoking, and accidents now account for the majority of healthy years of life lost. Within medical practice, behavioural factors also loom large in the transmission of infectious disease, medical adherence, and clinical errors. Yet these behavioural factors have received comparatively little attention, and the behavioural models within the medical community remain surprisingly undeveloped.”
The report will also present a shortlist of the interventions that have the most potential, while stressing the importance of continually testing new ideas and adapting to the results they generate.
Egbert Schillings, CEO, WISH, said: “As with previous summits, WISH seeks to present pioneering and comprehensive scientific research that provides answers to some of the toughest questions facing the healthcare sector today.