U.S. Maintains Lead in Medical Technology Innovation, Emerging Markets Gain Ground

The U.S. continues to lead the world in its capacity to produce the latest in medical technology innovation, but emerging markets led by China, India and Brazil are catching up, and their market power is shifting innovation resources and activity overseas, according to a new PricewaterCoopers (London) report Medical Technology Innovation Scorecard: The race for global leadership. While the U.S. is expected to maintain its leadership for the foreseeable future, even a narrowing of the gap has implications for U.S. jobs, exports and Americans’ access to advances in medical technology.

The report is based on the findings of the PwC Medical Technology Innovation Scorecard, a new, multifaceted assessment of the capacity of countries to adapt to the changing nature of innovation. While there has been much anecdotal evidence that the U.S. is losing ground as the world’s innovation leader, PwC analyzed the specific factors that contribute to medical technology innovation and quantified them, using 86 different metrics to evaluate how well each nation promotes the factors that advance innovation. The nine nations evaluated are Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Israel, Japan, the United Kingdom and the U.S.

In addition to providing a current view of innovative capacity and capability in these countries, the Innovation Scorecard looked at the past five years to gain a historical perspective and projected into the future to present the outlook for medical technology innovation leadership over the next decade to 2020.