Ian is an internationally known author, consultant, and futurist specializing in long-term forecasting and planning with particular emphasis on health care and the changing business environment. He combines research and consulting skills with an incisive Scottish wit to help public and private organizations plan their longer-term future.
Ian has written, lectured, and consulted on a wide variety of forecasting, strategy, and health care topics for government, industry, and a variety of nonprofit organizations in North America, Europe, the Middle-East and Asia. He has spoken to a range of audiences from the boards of Fortune 100 companies to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. Ian has worked with more than 100 Fortune 500 companies in health care, manufacturing, information technology, and financial services. Recent client sponsors include CVS Health, Kaiser Permanente and the Mayo Clinic. He is a frequent commentator on the future for television, radio, and the print media.
Ian is the author of Leading Change in Healthcare: Building a Viable System for Today and Tomorrow (AHA Press, June 2011) and Healthcare in the New Millennium: Vision, Values and Leadership (Jossey-Bass, 2002). His previous book: The Second Curve – Managing The Velocity of Change (Ballantine, 1996) was a New York Times Business Bestseller and Businessweek Bestseller and was published in 7 languages. Ian has co-authored several other books and chapters, including Future Tense: The Business Realities of the Next Ten Years (William Morrow, 1994) and Looking Ahead at American Health Care (McGraw-Hill, 1988). He also has co-authored numerous journal articles for publications such as Chief Executive, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Across the Board, The British Medical Journal, New England Journal of Medicine, and Health Affairs.
Ian is a past President of the Institute for the Future (IFTF). Ian is a founding partner in Strategic Health Perspectives a joint venture between Harris Interactive and the Harvard School of Public Health’s Department of Health Policy and Management. In 2017 the Strategic Health Perspectives team joined with Leavitt Partners (Health Intelligence Partners HIP program) a forecasting and intelligence service for clients in the healthcare industry. Ian serves as a Senior Advisor to Leavitt Partners and to HIP.
From 1996-1999, Ian was retained by Accenture, (formerly Andersen Consulting), as Chairman of the Health Futures Forum. In that capacity, Ian chaired a number of international forums on the future of healthcare. Before coming to IFTF in 1985, Ian spent seven years in British Columbia, Canada, in a variety of research, teaching, and consulting positions.
Ian holds an interdisciplinary Ph.D. in urban studies from the University of British Columbia; an M.A. in geography from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and a graduate degree in urban planning from the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England). He is a past director and chair of the California Health Care Foundation; a director of the new Martin Luther King Community Hospital in Los Angeles; a past director of the Health Research and Education Trust (HRET), the research and education arm of the American Hospital Association; and a past director of the Center for Healthcare Design. Ian currently serves on the Founder’s Council of United States of Care a new non-partisan non-profit movement to achieve long-lasting solutions that make health care better for everyone. He also serves on the Advisory Council of the Council of Accountable Physician Practices (an affiliate of the American Medical Group Association and served as a member of the Stakeholders Advisory Committee of the Program on Health System Improvement at Harvard University.
In 2018 Ian received the American Hospital Association’s Board of Trustees Award, for his more than 20 years of service to the AHA and the healthcare field.
