It is an early and unusually sunny morning on Frederiksholms Kanal, a cobbled stone street sitting along the channels in the inner city of Denmark's capital Copenhagen. Nestled within a quaint courtyard, a newly renovated complex of 17th-century buildings houses a range of organisations working to advance architecture, design and digital innovation.

This morning a diverse group of people are meeting to explore the future: government officials, business leaders, futurists, healthcare specialists, technologists. Curated by a small design team, they are meeting, about 40 people in total, to discover the changing nature of healthcare. They are embarking on a journey to help redefine health, shape new markets for health business and provide a platform for preparing doctors and nurses for an uncertain future where the only certainty is that the skills they possess today will not be the skills they need tomorrow.

The project, titled ‘Boxing Future Health’, is ambitious in its scope, but also very practical. The aims are, firstly, to create three or four scenarios for the future of health in the year 2050; secondly, to build those futures into 40-foot shipping containers, in the shape of physical and digital exhibitions that can deliver immersive experiences – including the sights, sounds and even smells – of what living in different ‘health futures’ could plausibly be like. What might the very concept of health mean for a citizen living in 2050? For a health professional? For a student of medicine? How would their behaviour be shaped by the dominant culture, by technology, by markets, by political decisions?

Some of the key project participants, such as medical device manufacturers and other life science firms, see the potential in unlocking new ideas for future products by engaging their development teams, customers and partners in such tangible deep-dives into alternative futures. Other participants, such as the project director of a new, upcoming children's hospital in Copenhagen that aims to be the world's best, is in the game for the same reason – but on the opposite side of the table.