Medical technological progress has been shown to be the main driver of health care costs. A key policy question is whether new treatment options are worth the additional costs. In this paper we assess the causal effect of percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (PTCA), a major new heart...

We investigate the impact of obstetrician supervision, as opposed to midwife supervision, on the short-term health of low-risk newborns. We exploit a unique policy rule in the Netherlands that creates a large discontinuity in the probability of a low-risk birth being attended by an obstetrician...

Subsidized health insurance markets use diagnosis-based risk adjustment to induce insurers to offer an equitable benefit to individuals of varying expected cost. I demonstrate that technological change after risk adjustment calibration -- new drug entry and the onset of generic competition --...

Throughout history the development of medical institution was followed by the extension of medical expertise boundaries. Progress in new medical biotechnologies and the manipulation of human biological material, in particular, raise the conceptual question of how to define the boundaries between...

Judge Bryson recently asserted in Association for Molecular Pathology v. US Patent and Trademark Office (dissenting-in-part) that human gene patents "present a significant obstacle to the next generation of innovation in genetic medicine — multiplex tests and whole-genome sequencing." His...

ObjectivesThe aim of this study was to investigate how the differences across the regional reimbursement mechanisms and in particular the use of the DRGs impact on the level in the high technology equipment diffusion.MethodsBased on hospital sector data at a regional level we build up indicators...

For those who follow health and technology news, it is difficult to go more than a few days without reading about a compelling new application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to health care. AI has myriad applications in medicine and its adjacent industries, with AI-driven tools already in use...

Innovative products form the foundation for the international success of electromedical technology in Germany. This is shown both in the strong sales achieved by the German medical technology segment compared with other industrial countries and the export share of more than 70%, which even...