Second World War And The Direction Of Medical Innovation

This paper provides an overview of the role of the United States of America (U.S.) Second World War research effort on the direction of innovation, with a particular focus on medical research. It provides an overview of the U.S. wartime research program, reviews quantitative evidence on the effects of the overall wartime research shock on postwar patenting, describes the wartime medical research effort, and summarizes case studies of five major wartime medical research programs (penicillin, antimalarials, vaccines, blood substitutes, and hormones) and their effects on postwar R&D. It concludes by drawing out implications for crisis innovation and the direction of innovation in general, discussing mechanisms through which crises may have long-run effects, and highlighting hypotheses warranting further investigation.

This paper provides an overview of the role of the United States of America (U.S.) Second World War research effort on the direction of innovation, with a particular focus on medical research. It provides an overview of the U.S. wartime research program, reviews quantitative evidence on the effects of the overall wartime research shock on postwar patenting, describes the wartime medical research effort, and summarizes case studies of five major wartime medical research programs (penicillin, antimalarials, vaccines, blood substitutes, and hormones) and their effects on postwar R&D. It concludes by drawing out implications for crisis innovation and the direction of innovation in general, discussing mechanisms through which crises may have long-run effects, and highlighting hypotheses warranting further investigation.

This study has emerged from an ongoing program of trilateral cooperation between WHO, WTO and WIPO. It responds to an increasing demand, particularly in developing countries, for strengthened capacity for informed policy-making in areas of intersection between health, trade and IP, focusing on access to and innovation of medicines and other medical technologies.

What is the direction of innovation? As the world looks to rebuild from the pandemic, innovation has a crucial role to play in opening up new growth possibilities and creating much needed solutions to the common challenges we face. Decisions on innovation may be complex, but, as this report highlights, it is vital that they are understood.

The untold story of the discovery of the first wonder drug, the men who led the way, and how it changed the modern world The discovery of penicillin in 1928 ushered in a new age in medicine. But it took a team of Oxford scientists headed by Howard Florey and Ernst Chain four more years to develop it as the first antibiotic, and the most important family of drugs in the twentieth century. At once the world was transformed-major bacterial scourges such as blood poisoning and pneumonia, scarlet fever and diphtheria, gonorrhea and syphilis were defeated as penicillin helped to foster not only a medical revolution but a sexual one as well. In his wonderfully engaging book, acclaimed author Eric Lax tells the real story behind the discovery and why it took so long to develop the drug. He reveals the reasons why credit for penicillin was misplaced, and why this astonishing achievement garnered a Nobel Prize but no financial rewards for Alexander Fleming, Florey, and his team. The Mold in Dr. Florey's Coat is the compelling story of the passage of medicine from one era to the next and of the eccentric individuals whose participation in this extraordinary accomplishment has, until now, remained largely unknown.

This paper has two objectives. First, it describes a new database mapping migratory patterns of inventors, extracted from information included in patent applications filed under the Patent Cooperation Treaty. It explains in detail the information contained in the database and discusses the usefulness and reliability of the underlying data. Second, the paper provides a descriptive overview of inventor migration patterns, based on the information contained in the newly constructed database.

Evidence suggests that medical innovation is becoming increasingly dependent on interdisciplinary research and on the crossing of institutional boundaries. This volume focuses on the conditions governing the supply of new medical technologies and suggest that the boundaries between disciplines, institutions, and the private and public sectors have been redrawn and reshaped. Individual essays explore the nature, organization, and management of interdisciplinary R&D in medicine; the introduction into clinical practice of the laser, endoscopic innovations, cochlear implantation, cardiovascular imaging technologies, and synthetic insulin; the division of innovating labor in biotechnology; the government- industry-university interface; perspectives on industrial R&D management; and the growing intertwining of the public and proprietary in medical technology.

High-skilled immigrants are a very important component of U.S. innovation and entrepreneurship. Studies regarding the impact of immigrants on natives tend to find limited consequences in the short-run, while the results in the long-run are more varied and much less certain. Immigrants in the United States aid business and technology exchanges with their home countries, but the overall effect that the migration has on the home country remains unclear. Little is known about return migration of workers engaged in innovation and entrepreneurship, except that it is rapidly growing in importance.