The Changing Economics Of Medical Technology

Americans praise medical technology for saving lives and improving health. Yet, new technology is often cited as a key factor in skyrocketing medical costs. This volume, second in the Medical Innovation at the Crossroads series, examines how economic incentives for innovation are changing and what that means for the future of health care. Up-to-date with a wide variety of examples and case studies, this book explores how payment, patent, and regulatory policiesâ€"as well as the involvement of numerous government agenciesâ€"affect the introduction and use of new pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and surgical procedures. The volume also includes detailed comparisons of policies and patterns of technological innovation in Western Europe and Japan. This fact-filled and practical book will be of interest to economists, policymakers, health administrators, health care practitioners, and the concerned public.

Technological development has created major possibilities for the treatment of disease and for the disabled. The cost of new technologies has added considerably to health care cost intlation, which still exceeds the growth rates of most national economies. The share of national resources devoted to health care is still rising, although at a lesser pace than in the seventies. -Therefore, the use of medical technology confronts us with some of the major dilemmas in society today. The routine and intensive use of technology has transformed the most basic interpersonal and social features of medicine. It has altered the means through which patient and doctor communicate about illness as well as the content of this communication, changed the doctor's relationship to medical colleagues by increasing his dependence on them, altered the place and form of practice by creating advantages for the centralization of medical care in complex organizations, and created for society new responsibilities and powers to influence the context and scope of medical practice.

Technological change in healthcare has led to huge improvements in health services and the health status of populations. It is also pinpointed as the main driver of healthcare expenditure. Although offering remarkable benefits, changes in technology are not free and often entail significant financial, as well as physical or social risks. These need to be balanced out in the setting of government regulations, insurance contracts, and individuals' decisions to use and consume certain technologies. With this in mind, this book addresses the following important objectives: to provide a detailed analysis of what technological change is; to identify drivers of innovation in several healthcare areas; to present existing mechanisms and processes for ensuring and valuing efficiency and development in the use of medical technologies; and to analyse the impact of advances in medical technology on health, healthcare expenditure, and health insurance. Each of the seventeen chapters summarizes an important issue concerning the innovation debate and contributes to a better understanding of the role innovation has both at the macro level and at the delivery (meso) and micro level in the healthcare sector. The effectiveness of innovation in improving people's welfare depends on its diffusion and inception by the relevant agents in the health production process, and this book recognizes the multi-faceted contribution of policy makers, regulators, managers, technicians, consumers and patients to this technology change. This book offers the first truly global economic analysis of healthcare technologies, taking the subject beyond simply economic evaluation, and exploring the behavioural aspects, organization and incentives for new technology developments, and the adoption and diffusion of these technologies.

The U.S. health care system is in a state of flux, and changes currently under way seem capable of exerting sizable effects on medical innovation. This volume explores how the rapid transition to managed care might affect the rate and direction of medical innovation. The experience with technological change in medicine in other nations whose health care systems have "single-payer" characteristics is thoroughly examined. Technology and Health Care in an Era of Limits examines how financing and care delivery strategies affect the decisions made by hospital administrators and physicians to adopt medical technologies. It also considers the patient's stake in the changing health care economy and the need for a stronger independent contribution of patients to the choice of technology used in their care. Finally, the volume explores the impact of changes in the demand for medical technology in pharmaceutical, medical device, and surgical procedure innovation.

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 information and decision-making processes determine how and whether an experimental medical technology becomes accepted and used? Adopting New Medical Technology reviews the strengths and weaknesses of present coverage and adoption practices, highlights opportunities for improving both the decision-making processes and the underlying information base, and considers approaches to instituting a much-needed increase in financial support for evaluative research. Essays explore the nature of technological change; the use of technology assessment in decisions by health care providers and federal, for-profit, and not-for-profit payers; the role of the courts in determining benefits coverage; strengthening the connections between evaluative research and coverage decision-making; manufacturers' responses to the increased demand for outcomes research; and the implications of health care reform for technology policy.

Includes various aspects of the process of treating disease (such as pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and surgical procedures) is important for individual health and, consequently, also for general welfare. This title provides theoretical and empirical evidence about the market for medical technology.