The impact of imaging research on medicine and society: translating research into products (Invited Paper)

Innovations in diagnostic imaging have had important impact on medical practice and more importantly on individual patients. It provides valuable information that shortens the time to accurate diagnosis, reduces risk compared to more invasive alternatives, and improves patient management and outcomes. The impact of imaging research is multiplied if the advance is adopted by a large number of practitioners. This translation into wide use can be into the research community or into a much larger clinical base. While clinical adoption can reach more people research adoption may be very important by facilitating other advances that in turn get translated into broad use. Dissemination can be through publication of methods and results, which can be effective for research adoption, but broad dissemination very often requires incorporation into commercial products. The pathway to commercialization involves business decisions about the value to customers and marketing aspects which need to be weighed against the difficulties and costs of development, the availability of resources, both monetary and unique intellectual resources, and the difficulties and cost of regulatory approval. A decision to commercialize and idea is much more likely if the imaging advance has the support of stake- holders inside the company. For academic researchers this can be impacted by the degree to which the research has been collaborative with a company as opposed to being a new concept to the business. In this talk, I use a few vignettes to highlight these issues.