Medical technology in Canada, Germany, and the United States: an update

Major medical technology is internationally mobile and rapidly diffusing. This study compares the proliferation of six complex medical technologies in Canada and Germany with that in the United States, the traditional high-tech leader. The technologies--open-heart surgery, cardiac catheterization, organ transplantation, radiation therapy, extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy, and magnetic resonance imaging--are more prevalent in the United States, on a per capita basis, than in the other two countries. This was the case five years ago, too. The differences are large in some cases and small in others. Lithotriptors and imagers are growing annually at double-digit rates in all three countries.