Medical Equipment and Economic Determinants of Its Structure and Regulation in the Slovak Republic

Background

Modern medical equipment and technologies enable efficient and rapid diagnosis and treatment of diseases, hence their deployment in the health system necessity (Rosina et al., 2014). In addition to the quantifiable economic savings also it happens to humane treatment, prevention of possible complications, and thus to the elimination of the additional costs in the event of subsequent medical care for patients. Timely and successful diagnostics will save unnecessary medical procedures according to experts who make up one third – analysis of the European Association of medical technology Eucomed. Modern medical technologies, modern approaches to diagnosis and treatment combined with early detection also allow to shorten hospitalisation time for some diseases from several weeks to a few days. Reducing the number of hospital admissions and inpatient treatment time and replace feature to make it by the day surgery has been a global trend lately (Gavurová & Šoltés, 2014). In addition to radical savings in the health system derived from therapeutic and diagnostic procedure in conjunction with application of the latest research findings and health technologies, the macroeconomic view on this issue is also important. Within the medical technology industry in Europe more than 500,000 people are employed, making it a production of medical technologies important element of the gross domestic product of individual European countries. Upgrading of medical technologies occurs not only to improve them, but also to their constant replacement of modern and innovative technologies in the short term. This is confirmed by the fact that, for instance in 2012 the European Patent Office received more than 10,000 patent applications in the field of medical technology and the number is increasing. It is related to the significant progress in research and development.

Despite the positive development of modern medical technology an important component in the process of successful diagnosis and treatment becomes their availability. Availability of advanced medical technologies in the Slovak Republic is not proportional and regionally balanced. There are various problems that have long-term systemic nature (Gavurová & Šoltés, 2014; Kneppo et al., 2014).