Duke 2008 | ASHE | Equity and Efficiency in Health and Healthcare

Medical devices are instruments or machines that are used to treat or diagnose disease, and include a broad variety of implements, such as tongue depressors, drug-eluting stents, and xray machines, with total sales of $86 billion in 2006. Despite the large size of the market for medical devices, as well as its anticipated annual growth rate of 10%, surprisingly little is understood about its economics, especially when compared to the existing economic knowledge about the market for pharmaceuticals. The purpose of this session is to spur discussion about the current state of economic knowledge on the market for medical devices, and to discuss possible directions for future research. Three recent papers on the economics of medical devices will be presented. The first will discuss the regulation of medical devices in the United States and the potential welfare effects of this regulation. The second will examine the welfare effects of increased use of medical imaging in the United States. The final presentation examines the differences between medical devices and pharmaceuticals, and examines how these differences might impact evidence-based decision-making, such as the use of cost-effectiveness analyses or clinical trials.