New Medical Technologies: The Journey from the Laboratory to the Patient

Simple diagnostic or therapeutic procedures can produce tremendous benefits for patients, but first, they have to make the transition from a research environment to the real world. To see how new ideas in the laboratory evolve into benefits for patients, we have tried to analyze how the corresponding information is distributed. We have quantified this flow of information by looking at the number of new scientific publications and citation numbers on a specific pathology that causes vertigo. This approach is facilitated by the fact that the diagnostic procedure that we consider can be traced back to a seminal publication. Our results indicate that our current way of disseminating new information is working well. We suggest that the application of new methods is limited by the availability and reliability of the required technology.