[Evolution of the socio-economic impact of health-related biotechnologies]

The socioeconomic impacts of biotechnology applications need to be assessed due to their strategic character for all economic sectors and, particularly, for the health sector. However, this objective is not without difficulties in view of the horizontal and multifaceted character of life technologies, which hampers statistical analysis. The initiatives of international organizations such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the European Commission and Eurostat are helping to solve the problem and results are emerging from the use of questionnaires addressed to the actors (in the broad sense of the term) involved. In the case of Spain, the efforts of public and private institutions such as the Spanish Genome Foundation and the entrepreneurial association ASEBIO, together with the more recent intervention of the National Statistics Institute, have allowed considerable advances to be achieved and the important innovative character of health-oriented biotechnology to be recognized as a valid complement to the strong scientific and technical potential of the Spanish biotechnology community.