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Medical Innovations: Their Diffusion, Adoption, and Critical Interrogation
Author(s) -
Blume Stuart S.
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
sociology compass
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.782
H-Index - 31
ISSN - 1751-9020
DOI - 10.1111/soc4.12062
Subject(s) - normative , context (archaeology) , health technology , sociology , interrogation , promotion (chess) , technological change , faith , health care , biomedical technology , emerging technologies , globalization , public relations , politics , political science , law , economics , epistemology , paleontology , philosophy , materials science , agricultural engineering , macroeconomics , nanotechnology , biology , engineering
The 1950s and 1960s were a ‘golden age’ of medical progress: an era of high expectations, widespread faith, and life‐saving innovations. In the 1970s, as it gradually became clear that medicine's technological advance also contributed to the rising costs of health care, policy makers began to question the ways in which new technologies diffused. Sociologists soon found that professional and institutional interests, the search for competitive advantage, and processes of ‘institutional isomorphism’ played major roles. By the end of the millennium, as a result of growing patient (and ‘health care consumer’) activism, and of globalization, the context in which new technologies were developed, introduced, and used had become politicized, and technologies had become more heterogeneous. The patient perspective offered a new vantage point from which to study medical technology in use, and one which fitted many sociologists' normative and methodological commitments. Many recent sociological studies highlight failures, contradictions, and the (often concealed) interests involved in the promotion of new drugs and other medical technologies. However, resources for studies aligned with dominant interests, perspectives, and claims are more readily available.