Abstracts by key term: Progress
The 2013 coalition agreement does not mention the words innovation and progress once in the “Health and Care” section (apart from the new innovation fund), but this aspect is given very broad consideration in the economic policy part of the agreement. The key point is the goal of investing at least 3 % of the gross domestic product in research and development in the future. In order to achieve this, the health care system is also mentioned very prominently in the contract, for which the federal government, for example, plans to promote innovative products and processes in the area of individualized medicine as well as gender and geriatric medicine. However, the question arises as to what effects such research initiatives have on actual care in the health system, i.e. whether the translation into the care context is successful and whether appropriate procedures and assessment methods are available to decide which innovations actually represent medical or social progress should therefore find their way into general care practice at all. This is the subject of health services research, which from a health economics perspective always involves weighing up the identified benefits of a measure and the resources required to implement it. The use of these findings varies greatly depending on the service sector in the healthcare system, which indicates that there is a need to catch up, which will be discussed in this article. The starting point should first be a brief distinction between innovation and progress, in order to then discuss what contribution cost and benefit analyzes can make in this distinction.