No.52 Seminar ： Making Medicine a Business: an Economic History Perspective
- Pierre-Yves Donze (The Hakubi Center for Advanced Research)
- 2012/12/18 4:00pm
- The Hakubi Center for advanced research (iCeMS West Wing 2F, Seminar Room)
- Japanese
Summary
Today, healthcare makes up about 10% of GDP in developed countries, while it was only 5% in 1950 and 1% in 1900. Medicine became a fast-growing business during the late 19th century and technology played a key role in this process, transforming hospitals from charitable houses to institutions managed like enterprises. On the one hand, it became a crucial issue for doctors to secure their access to these technologies for their professional practice. They opened private clinics, negotiated the use of hospitals for their private needs, or got employed by big health centers. On the other hand, the population wanted to be cured with these new technologies, so the demand for hospitalization increased rapidly. This process led to the emergence of a market for healthcare. In this seminar, I will introduce the field of economic history of medicine, through some European and Japanese examples.