Identifying Potential Health Care Innovations for the Future Elderly

The authors used a method that combined literature review and expert judgment to assess potential medical innovations for older adults. They evaluated innovations in four domains: cardiovascular disease, cancer, the biology of aging, and neurologic disease. The innovations can be categorized by common themes: improved disease prevention, better detection of subclinical or early clinical disease, and treatments for established disease. The authors report the likelihood, potential impact, and potential cost implications for thirty-four innovations, and they revisit this forecast five years later. Many of the innovations have the potential to greatly affect the costs and outcomes of health care.