Abstract
The health care systems of the industrialized countries are expected to undergo major changes within the next 10 - 15 years. The number of elderly people requiring treatment will grow considerably, socalled welfare diseases is increasing, and increasing use of new advanced treatments will occur. This will require a more efficient health care system offering better services. A number of new health care technologies will emerge and several will be adopted by the health care systems.A Nordic consortium headed by SINTEF (Norway) and with the participants VTT (Finland), FOI (Sweden), S-SENCE (Sweden), Sensor Technology Centre (Denmark) and MedCoast-Scandinavia is conducting a foresight study on Biomedical Sensors. The project is supported by the Nordic Innovation Centre. The project revolves around a series of workshops, the first on held in Copenhagen 6-7 October 2005, the second one in Oslo on 2 November 2005, the third in Stockholm on 3 March 2006 and the fourth in Tampere on 7 June 2006. The objectives of the workshops have been to establish status, needs and perspectives for sensors in relation to health care and in particular the need for biomedical sensors. This paper presents the background, workshops and some of the findings so far in the project.