How Far Should An Entrepreneurial Doctor Go?
Many entrepreneurial doctors have been winning patents for a decade now on commonly used methods of practicing medicine, techniques such as those used for collecting blood, combining drugs to treat cancer, using eye drops to diagnose disease, intravenous infusion, even the use of ultrasound imaging to determine whether an unborn baby is a boy or a girl. I have to say that as a chiropractor who has developed a number of unique diagnostic approaches and chiropractic treatment protocols, I have mixed feelings about doctors seeking patents. On the hand, if a doctor has developed an actual instrument that other doctors can purchase and be taught to use, it seems to me that that doctor deserves the “credit” and the money derived from a patent on that instrument. But, a “procedure” is slightly more nebulas because “the way” of doing something may be discovered and utilized by any number of doctors, over time, as their experience leads them into new and better techniques. To put it another way, can any doctor actually claim to own the way he or she turns a knife when performing surgery?
Patents for pure medical and surgical methods were virtually unheard of three decades ago, and were rare in the 1980′s. But, beginning in the mid-90′s, several patents a week were being issued, though no official count exists. While the American Medical Association says it knows of no case in which one doctor has paid another doctor royalties for use of a technique, doctors with patents increasingly say they will seek such fees aggressively.
Where medical practices, and all other professional health care practices are concerned, it seems to me that the intentional withholding of new skills and techniques for reasons of personal gain, as with patents, is detrimental to the patients we serve. In addition, patents could restrict access to treatments, obstruct peer review of new therapies, and add to the cost of health care.
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