Changing Humanity: Health and the journey towards an era of self-management

Posted on August 5th, 2026

The development of medicine has been one of the most important drivers of human development in history, and therefore important to investors.

Medical innovations that have extended human lifespans ultimately create the conditions for long-term savings and investments, after all.

It follows that the next evolution in medicine and health will have consequences for investors.  Part of that story will be the growth of self-management, where individuals use technology and information to take ever greater control over their own health.

Based on the work of medical researchers and industry analysts, it is quite possible that by the time the youngest LGPS members are approaching pension age, almost everyone in the UK will use personal, wearable technology that provides them with constant real-time information about their health indicators. The early stages of this trend are visible today, but uptake remains limited and uneven.  In time, it will be universal.   Devices allowing real-time tracking of health data will become as ubiquitous as smartphones are today.

And potentially more useful, too.  It is already well-established that patients who get support to manage their own health tend to have better outcomes and less need of healthcare resources.

Programmes such as the NHS Diabetes Prevention Programme and the expansion of remote monitoring during the COVID-19 period have already demonstrated both the feasibility and the clinical benefits of large-scale patient self-management[1].

A move to more self-management is likely to mean significant demand for the technology involved, especially wearable and other portable devices for tracking and analysing health data.

Industry analysis from McKinsey[2]  suggests that wearable health technologies and continuous monitoring are among the fastest-growing segments of the healthcare system, but there may be much further to go here.

Could universal self-management reduce the drivers of conditions such as obesity and diabetes?  Optimistically, self-management could deliver a healthier population that requires less treatment and intervention from health services.

As well as making the NHS more financially sustainable, more self-management could actually strengthen its role in UK society.

The OECD[3] has found that self-management increases patient confidence in health professionals and health systems.

In an age of universal health monitoring the role of the NHS is likely to shift towards supporting decision-making by technology-empowered patients.  That empowerment may in turn increase public and political pressure for the purchase and use of novel medicines and treatments – the public pressure on the NHS to provide more GLP-1 inhibitors, for example, may be a sign of things to come.

 

Future Britain is a collection of insights and ideas from Border to Coast Pensions Partnership, exploring the trends that will shape Britain’s economy, society and investment landscape in the decades ahead. 

[1] NHS England (2024) Virtual Wards Operational Framework. Available at: https://www.england.nhs.uk/long-read/virtual-wards-operational-framework/

[2] Healthcare trends for 2026 and beyond | McKinsey, January 2026

[3] OECD (2023) Health at a Glance 2023: OECD Indicators. Paris: OECD Publishing. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1787/7a7afb35-en

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