Interdisciplinary research: shaping the healthcare of the future

The hospitals of the future will be shaped by scientific and technical advances made across a wide range of disciplines because complex problems in healthcare cannot be addressed successfully by a single discipline. This paper considers how interdisciplinary research is being promoted and the prospects for developing stronger and deeper collaborations between medicine, health and other disciplines, drawing on case studies from mathematics, physics and engineering. The anticipated impact of greater interdisciplinarity on clinical training and the provision of care is also reviewed. While the role and training of clinicians in the provision of care will continue to evolve, they will remain leading members of a much broader and more diverse interdisciplinary team, alert to the value of deep and sustained interdisciplinary research.