Anatomy of the medical innovation process : what are the consequences of replicability issues on innovation?

This paper is concerned with exploring the implications of replicability issues over the medical innovation process. Each research setting is characterized by a specific level of replicability, variability increasing with the complexity of the testing settings. The study introduces new measures to quantify the research efforts across different medical experimental settings. Doing so allows to map the dynamics of knowledge along the medical R&D spectrum and over time. The lack of replicability of experiments was overcome by recombining technological knowledge coming from distinct uses (laboratory tool and other medical applications) with clinical insights. The citation analysis suggests that science, technology, and clinical learning interact strongly and have an uneven importance over time. The study stresses the importance of economics of scope between experimenting and technology developments. In this process, a new type of chemotherapy emerged without a centralized institution governing the testing effort. Research and innovation policy implications are discussed.