Unpredictable change?

The meeting held by the Operational Research OR Society’s Health and Social Services Study Group on Simulation in Strategic Health Care Planning on 27 May 1994 in London was a sell out. A large meeting room at the top of Guy’s Tower was filled to overflowing, mainly with Operational Research OR practitioners and consultants keen to learn about, or to display, simulation and experience. Why? This paper hopes to provide some tentative answers, concentrating on the NHS, and to indicate a likely future for simulation methods and their use.