Problems of research and development in health services

Abstract

One of the main problems to technology utilization is the dynamics of the medical community. The users of the technology are not well acquainted with its potential value, the private entrepreneur (the physician) rarely purchases in quantity, and standards of manufacture have not been set. For these reasons, the medical market is unstable, risky, and expensive to enter. Most large companies get a greater return on engineering talent through mass-produced items. A means must be found to develop an interface between the inventor, the developer, the manufacturer, and the user of medical devices. The medical inventor is usually supported by grants or contracts and as such has little opportunity to develop an idea to the prototype or testing phase.

Industry is sometimes unwilling and sometimes unable to invest capital and talent in expensive development and production testing. The logical middleman in the chain is the federal government. Past experience indicates that when a prototype has been developed and successfully tested through government sponsorship, industry then becomes interested in production.

As a corollary to development, standardization must be established. The creation of a health caresystem where records on a consumer can be transferred from one point to another with complete understanding requires the standardization of tests, records, and many parts of the system as a whole. Any savings of scale can be accomplished only with mass production and this requires definition of a standard product.