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“Making something a reality.” Roll the phrase around. When would you use it? In your personal life, if you’re anything like me, not much. If so, it’s probably something which won’t actually happen. Making daily gym-going a reality. Making my-attachment-to-ebay-less-all-consuming a reality. 

​Having recently returned home to England from a nine-year stint across the pond, I've spent the last few months reading articles, asking questions and drawing diagrams. 

Why is behavioural science important in health? ​The operating manual for a healthy human mind and body is not a simple one. Successful maintenance requires us to make decisions based on uncertain futures, confront fear and embarrassment, and stick to habits often at odds with modern life.

Picture, if you will, a typical range of people using NHS services. Who do you see? Perhaps a frail older person, a new mother, an anxious adolescent, an overweight middle-aged man. We can all come up with our own range of stereotypes.

Lobbying in the UK is a £2 billion business, making it the third largest worldwide after the US and Brussels. Most people will have heard about the fossil fuel and tobacco sectors trying, and succeeding to, influence policy through lobbying, but what does it  mean for the health sector?

We recently spent two stimulating days at HSRUK 2018. Our colourful tablecloth, quirky leaflets and coffee maker attracted a lot of great people and we asked them all the same question: "What gets in the way of research, policy and practice working together?" The good news: people not caring is not the issue.

Social challenges are as tough and engrained as ever. With the increasing strain on health and care services, the mantra ‘more for less’ has become deafening and, on occasion, paralysing.

Our systems and institutions are not strong enough to support the level of debate and discussion we need to make resilient policy. If we stopped to think about what we were doing critically, would we change course so often? Maybe we would be more likely to uncover what we don’t know.

He stands up and walks around his desk, placing a sweaty hand on my lower back as he opens the office door to indicate it is time to go. “The Oracle represents the most sophisticated healthcare algorithm ever created. Trust Her.”

It seems to me the Writing the Future science fiction prize, and the beautiful, eerie stories, mess with our minds because they say ambiguous things about the gap between the present and the future. Is this gap vast, with futures yet untold unfolding in unpredictable directions? Or is this gap porous, and shrinking?