Archive for August, 2009

Where do medical innovations come from?

Tuesday, August 11th, 2009

On a talk show tonight the host proclaimed that most medical innovations come from the United States while challenging a caller to identify one from France.  To research that, I looked at the countries of Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine award recipients.  These are the countries of institutions the individuals work at (presumably at the time of the award), not the country of origin of the individuals.  For the years 1984 - 2008, the countries are listed below.  (Fractional shares of the prize are typically awarded, thus the decimals.)

United States = 17.16666

United Kingdom = 2.5

Germany = 1.8333333

Switzerland = 1.16666666

Austria = 1.0

France = 0.5

Italy = 0.5

UPDATE: The 2009 prize was divided into thirds, all of which went to researchers at institutions in the United States.