Innovation

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On this page, you’ll find the Center’s analysis on how free-market policies can better balance the competing interests of medical innovation and competition. Here, you’ll find our research and commentary on such issues as patents, research and development spending, and reforms that will promote more robust competition.

December 10, 2020 Blog, Innovation

By Henry Miller, Shiv Sharma Much of the progress in medicine during the past half-century has involved expensive, high-tech diagnostic tests and therapies.  The trend in this direction worries health economists and politicians because it has the potential to send already-high healthcare costs into the stratosphere. However, in both medicine and dentistry, there is an important role as well for ingenious, low-tech, less expensive approaches to improved health and increased longevity. The FDA last year approved a high-tech gene therapy drug, Zolgensma, for a...

November 25, 2020 Blog, Coronavirus-Alternate2, Innovation

By Henry I. Miller, M.S., M.D. and John J. Cohrssen The United States is one of the most seriously COVID-19-impacted countries, faring the worst among the ten most-affected countries worldwide, as measured by new cases. The pandemic threatens both American lives and the economy. Even more worrisome, as shown below in this figure, the situation is deteriorating. Two things about those trends are especially problematic: first, deaths are a lagging indicator, following chronologically behind cases and hospitalizations, so the death curve will continue upwards; and...

October 29, 2020 Coronavirus - Alternate, Innovation

For the more than 7 million Americans who inject insulin, Friday will mark an important anniversary: 38 years since the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the use of human insulin synthesized in genetically engineered bacteria. This momentous event launched a revolutionary new era in pharmaceutical development, and, as the FDA medical reviewer of the product and the head of the evaluation team at the time, I had a front-row seat. To commemorate the event, I open a bottle of champagne every...

October 13, 2020 Briefs, Innovation, Price and Costs

A new brief released today by the Center for Medical Economics and Innovation at the nonpartisan Pacific Research Institute shows that counterfeit drugs put patients in harm’s way, hinder drug innovation, and lead to job losses. Proposals like drug importation or price controls, if implemented, would exacerbate the problem and result in more health and economic consequences. Click here to download the brief “Counterfeit drugs expose patients to potentially lethal contaminants, and may also increase public health risks by failing to effectively...

July 28, 2020 Coronavirus-Alternate2, Innovation, Issues

It's hard to find a silver lining in a pandemic. But one of the few may be the rapid rise of telemedicine. With people stuck at home, doctors retooled their practices to see patients via videoconference. Insurance companies and regulators expanded the number of services available via telemedicine—and made reimbursement for telehealth consultations on par with conventional in-person visits. The Federal Trade Commission has now called on officials at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)  to permanently extend the emergency...

July 9, 2020 Innovation

The COVID-19 crisis has tested America’s health care system like no other event in recent memory. One irony during this pandemic is that America has actually experienced the promise of health care innovation in an important way, namely through telehealth. Telehealth allows patients to talk with their doctors online using videoconferencing platforms. Doctors can see patients, discuss their symptoms, order tests, and even prescribe medication. Earlier this spring, as the coronavirus was becoming a serious problem across the country, Congress temporarily suspended regulations...

May 27, 2020 Coronavirus, Coronavirus Multimedia, Industry Trends, Infographics, Innovation, Radio

Listen to Dr. Henry Miller, PRI senior fellow in health studies, discuss the move by the WHO to pause hydroxychloroquine trials for Coronavirus treatment on the nationally-syndicated Lars Larson Show. TheLarsLarsonShow · Dr. Henry Miller - WHO pauses hydroxychloroquine trials for Coronavirus treatment...

May 20, 2020 Coronavirus, Innovation

A COVID-19 Vaccine by January? Here’s Why It’s Possible But Not Likely By Christopher Curley The timeline to develop a safe, effective vaccine to fight a virus is typically counted in years — or even decades. But with the COVID-19 pandemic affecting millions around the world and killing hundreds of thousands of people, the race is on to produce a vaccine faster than ever before. President Donald Trump has said a vaccine could be available by January, which would be an unprecedented development cycle. But how realistic is that? Experts...

May 15, 2020 Innovation, Issues

Medical innovations do not happen overnight. Whether it is gene therapies, new vaccines, or cutting-edge medical equipment, developing innovative medical products is a risky venture. It also takes time, lots of financial resources, and most importantly, human ingenuity. Developing new drugs, for instance, can take between 10 and 15 years. Now, more than ever, it is imperative that our regulatory framework encourages innovation and protects the intellectual property that makes innovation possible. Otherwise, the medical advancements we desperately need will cease....

April 27, 2020 Blog, Coronavirus, Innovation

How hydroxychloroquine toes the line between promise and 'happy talk' in the coronavirus fight By: Anjalee Khemlani After weeks of polarizing debate over the use of two generic anti-malarial drugs, hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine, the Food and Drug Administration this week warned they were not “safe and effective” when used on COVID-19 patients. However, the hydroxychloroquine debate is far from over, as the drug gets qualified support from others deeply involved in the war against the coronavirus, and is used to treat COVID-19 patients...

April 22, 2020 Blog, Coronavirus, Innovation

Covid-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths are leveling off in hot spots like Seattle and New York. New infections should soon begin to decline, and many parts of the country will be able to start a phased return to “normal.” Yet without a vaccine, normality will look very different than it did before the pandemic. The medical community and the public are hungry for news about vaccines, but accounts of progress have been exaggerated. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of...

March 25, 2020 Blog, Coronavirus, Innovation

Optimism is in short supply as the coronavirus pandemic grows deadlier by the day. COVID-19 has taken thousands of lives around the world and upended nearly every aspect of daily life. But there is at least one bright spot in this global public health emergency. That's the astounding speed with which private firms have begun tackling the problem. While federal regulators have exacerbated the crisis at seemingly every turn, private firms have rolled out promising new therapies and technologies that could...

March 23, 2020 Blog, Coronavirus, Innovation

As the United States ramps up rapid testing for the coronavirus, the results will surely show a sharp uptick in the number of cases of coronavirus-caused COVID-19. Those tested will learn whether they are infected, but, paradoxically, the public – and public health officials – will not know whether the overall results are encouraging or discouraging, because the rates of the coronavirus infectivity and mortality will remain poorly understood. The existing tests will not identify the potentially large numbers of people who were...

March 11, 2020 Blog, Coronavirus, Innovation

When President Trump met with drug-company executives at the White House on March 2, at the top of the agenda was the development of a vaccine to prevent COVID-19, the respiratory infection caused by the Wuhan coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2 (the World Health Organization’s designation for the virus). “We’ve asked them to accelerate” work, the president told reporters. As the coronavirus outbreak accelerates, with cases now found on every continent except Antarctica, and the world is hit with widespread social and economic disruption,...

February 12, 2020 Blog, Coronavirus, Innovation, Issues

As the outbreak of a novel coronavirus accelerates in China, and sporadic cases appear elsewhere in Asia, North America, Australia, and Europe, there is intense interest in the development of a vaccine, and several U.S. drugmakers have begun working on them with the National Institutes of Health. As the Wall Street Journal noted in a Jan. 30 editorial, “It took scientists 20 months to develop a SARS vaccine to test on humans, but the NIH hopes to have a vaccine ready for human trials...

February 6, 2020 Coronavirus, Innovation, Issues, Multimedia, Radio

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=so744sbVJ_E Dr. Henry Miller, senior fellow with PRI’s Center for Medical Economics and Innovation, joins PRI's "Next Round" podcast to discuss the Wuhan Coronavirus. We explore a wide variety of topics related to this public health crisis, including how people get the illness and how it is being treated, how the Chinese and U.S. governments are working to combat it, the prospects for the rapid development of a vaccine, how social media disinformation is fueling the crisis, and how concerned Americans...

January 20, 2020 Blog, Innovation

Much of the progress in medicine during the past half-century has involved expensive, high-tech diagnostic tests and therapies. The trend in this direction worries health economists and politicians because it has the potential to send already high health care costs into the stratosphere. Health care spending in 2017 reached $3.5 trillion, or a whopping 17.9% of the nation’s gross domestic product, according to government statistics. However, there is an important role as well for ingenious, low-tech, less-expensive approaches to improved health...

November 7, 2019 Blog, Innovation, Policy Proposals

Once wide coercive powers are given to government agencies…such powers cannot be effectively controlled. F.A. Hayek As part of the chorus calling for drug price controls, the New York Times editorial page has claimed that “Americans will need to accept a trade-off that other advanced nations long since come around to: Slightly fewer new drugs will come to market, in exchange for better prices on the medications that already exist”. There is not one part of this statement that is true. Worse, if the Times’...