Medical & Wellbeing
Science has had a huge impact on medical and health related industries.
While innovation in new drugs and treatments has delivered new lifelines for people who previously had none, medical research has uncovered conditions previously unknown and contributed to a modern society of the ‘worried well’.
It’s a phenomenon that puts immense pressure on health services and economies around the world.
Consuming just under 10 percent of gross domestic product of most developed nations, health care can form an enormous part of a country's economy.
In 2003, health care costs paid to hospitals, physicians, nursing homes, diagnostic laboratories, pharmacies, medical device manufacturers and other components of the health care system, consumed 16.3 percent of the GDP of the United States, the largest of any country in the world.
For the United States, the health share of gross domestic product (GDP) is expected to hold steady in 2006 before resuming its historical upward trend, reaching 19.5 percent of GDP by 2016.
In 2001, for the OECD countries the average was 8.4 percent with the United States (13.9%), Switzerland (10.9%), and Germany (10.7%) being the top three.