Future of Biotech Equipment/Medical Device Research & Development: A Case for Redemption of the Neglect | Biomedgrid

The global healthcare industry is undergoing a progressive transformation at a rapid pace. Ground breaking innovation across multiple fields including biotechnology, pharmaceutical and medical devices is driving this transformative journey, the main outcome of which is improved patient health and decreased cost burden resulting in enhanced quality of life. Small molecule drug development and advances in bio therapeutic formulations by various pharmaceutical and biotechnological companies respectively, either alone, or in collaboration with dedicated research groups in academia tend to garner the majority of government and non-governmental funding. However, a critical area of biomedical research that lags behind in comparison with its peers in this category are biomedical devices that are also an integral part of patient therapy. While this disparity is most evident in the developing countries beset with social inequalities and a lack of medical infrastructure [1] , even in developed nations leading in biotech innovation such as the US there has been a steady decline in the investment poured into this field with a fall in available funding from 11% in 2010 to approximately 5% in 2016 [2] . Collectively, this imbalance could perhaps be applied to the term “10/90 Gap” coined by Global Forum for Health Research [3] to reflect that only 10% of health research funds are spent on the problem of developing optimum biotech equipment and devices for 90% of the world's population.