Horizon scanning

Horizon scanning (HS) or horizon scan is a method from futures studies, sometimes regarded as a part of foresight. It is the early detection and assessment of emerging technologies or threats for mainly policy makers in a domain of choice. Such domains include agriculture, environmental studies, health care, biosecurity, and food safety. Some sources mention HS as an alternative name for environmental scanning (ES), or view HS as a subset of ES, or at least suggest ES to have a similar goal to HS. In summary, ES has key differences to HS. ES is rather concerned to provide industry specific information for short-term decision making in a competitive environment. One of the first usages of the term horizon scanning as related to futures studies appeared in 1995 in a paper discussing trends in information technology and forecasting the year 2005. Then, horizon scanning was used to name detection and early evaluation of health care technologies in a European workshop in September 1997, whose participants were 27 policy makers and researchers from 12 countries. This workshop was organized as a part of the European health technology assessment project (HTA). Policy makers and planners of health services were the main target groups for knowledge produced by horizon scanning. A 2013 systematic study of 23 formally established health technology HS programs from different countries identified following common phases in a horizon scanning process: Identify the users of the HS products. Estimate the time available for the HS effort. Conduct HS, and identify emerging technologies that potentially affect targeted domain. Filter the identified technologies by applying criteria for determining the relevance of the technologies to the HS effort. Prioritize the technologies that have passed through the filtering process by applying criteria based on stakeholders’ requirements and needs. Assess technologies of high priority for the stakeholders, and predict their potential impacts targeted domain. Use peer review to check for quality of the HS process and products.