What Countries Have Lead The World In Medical Research And Innovation In The Past 20 Years?

This question was originally posted on Quora.



Answer by: Christopher VanLang, I make drugs

It's the US. This isn't even up for debate. By pretty much any metric, the US has destroyed the competition when it comes to total impact in medical research and innovation.

Here are the number of papers and citations produced by the top 20 countries. China is creeping up but anyone can tell you that the data really isn't that good. I've included the top 20 to allow for nay-sayers to point out that Holland and Switzerland technically have higher citations per document.



SJR - International Science Ranking

Referencing How much of the medical research in the world is done in the US? Sure you can say that Oxford and Cambridge are some of the most important medical institutions in the world and that the UK makes some major contributions to the medical world but those two institutions generate no where close to the same volume as all 50 US states.


Here is a map of where all of the registered clinical trials are running. Even when you combine all of Europe, the US still runs more trials.

Studies on Map - ClinicalTrials.gov



From Christopher VanLang's answer to How much of the cost of designing and manufacturing a new drug do U.S pharmaceutical companies recover from the U.S compared to Europe or Asia?

By my own calculations, ~40% of the world's medical R&D budget is spend in the US.
For comparative years here are the numbers and percent of Global R&D.

• 2002: 31.0 Billion 45.3%
• 2004: 37.0 Billion 42.9%
  
• 2006: 43.4 Billion 41.4%
  
• 2008: 47.4 Billion 37.7%
  
• 2009: 46.4 Billion 37.3%
  
• 2010: 50.7 Billion 39.7%
  
• 2011/2: 49.5 Billion 37.4%

Most of the hoopla about "Them Asians are catching up to the US in medical innovation" or "Those Europeans are more civilized than the fat unhealthy Americans" are actually complaining about how the impact of the US fell from 39% to 37% of the world's total output. It's like complaining that the US armed forces are losing ground.

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