the medical research essay tutors

the medical research essay tutors

The Role of Medical Research in Advancing Healthcare: A Comprehensive Analysis

1. Introduction to Medical Research

Medical research over the past two centuries has produced remarkable advances in the provision of healthcare services. These advances consist of an increasing understanding of the biological processes that cause disease, as well as the development of more effective methods to prevent, diagnose, and treat these medical conditions. Sustained investments in medical research have provided important cost-effective technical advances to improve the quality of the healthcare services that practitioners offer to their patients. More broadly, the ambiance of discovery and inquiry of medical research has also provided new knowledge about the human body that has been both intellectually stimulating and frequently of immense value to human society.

The nonmarket quality of the fruits of medical research, however, creates a special demand for public intervention to ensure that society realizes the full benefits of such research. Thus, salaries of government researchers and government payments to support postdoctoral scholarships or graduate or postgraduate scholarships for future researchers may be considered an intervention embodied in the production process that shapes the economic environment within which the market is allowed to function. In moving down this road, it is likely that individual researchers or society in general will generate more applied research results, benefiting greatly from the outcomes of basic research whose output cannot be patented by definition.

2. Key Benefits of Medical Research in Healthcare

Making science a chief part of humanity’s cultural heritage is the whole purpose of medical research. One can see this mission in full effect when considering how health has been transformed by scientific investigation of the human being. Diseases that were once fatal can now be cured, effectively if not always conveniently controlled, and sometimes largely prevented. Technologies have been developed that allow the full range of physical human capabilities, no matter how abnormally limited by nature, to be either permanently restored to normal functioning or dependably simulated. Similarly, advances in developing and applying new information about the human being have resulted in direct benefits to the general and individual healthcare systems within which current medical care is given.

Medical care has always been crucially informed by the best understanding of science, and it has been the domain where that understanding has been most frequently but also most routinely advanced. From the development of the hypodermic syringe to today’s ‘designer’ (or molecularly sequenced) drugs, and from developments in radiography to the current technological understanding of brain function, the practice of medical care has greatly benefited from the results of the scientific method. What may surprise some is the fact that what has been traditionally called ‘medical research’ constitutes only part of the productive force that has advanced healthcare during the last 50 years.

3. Challenges and Ethical Considerations in Medical Research

One challenge in longitudinal medical research with extended follow-up is the need to manage executive changes and institutional inertia, which may lead to protocol deviations or research being abandoned altogether. Long-term funding uncertainties may lead to an unintended termination of long-term follow-up, creating biased results. These constant shifts generate great amounts of data that must be carefully stored in methodologically sound ways in the long term. For some data, usually biological samples, the importance of preserving them is obvious for virtually any type of scientific pursuit. For example, genetic data can be used for generations to come, but samples degrade over time unless they are properly stored and managed. Data from old trials with long follow-up can be especially important, as they can provide unique information as the technology and the study design improve. For example, most public health studies would not have been ethical more than 40 years ago.

Many trials are stopped prematurely, without a clear statistical reason. In fact, many studies are stopped early not because of benefit, but because of futility, harm, funding shortage, a major leadership change, or a change in the standard of care. Results of prematurely stopped trials have the potential to be misleading; thus, their use in clinical practice should be considered with caution. Many trials are stopped based on statistically significant interim (usually futility) results because of a waterfall-like approach to p-value decision making, without consideration of the impact on regulatory or policy decisions. Making data available to regulatory and health policy decision-makers may mitigate these issues. Another common practice in research ethics committees is when there are regulatory or funder pressures to conduct research or when there is a lack of regulation or research infrastructure in the study location-data are hidden (or not gathered thoroughly) to satisfy the funder or the regulatory entity.

4. Innovations and Breakthroughs in Medical Research

Introduction: The Role of Medical Research in Advancing Healthcare outlines some of the most significant medical discoveries over the last century. The societal impacts of the U.S. medical research enterprise include increased human longevity and the provision of the knowledge that can help assure steady progress in reducing the burdens of illness. These findings suggest that future return-on-investment from taxpayer support of medical research, particularly for basic and pre-discovery stages of scientific knowledge creation, will be extraordinarily high. However, any single research finding is uncertain, for medical research is highly competitive and complex with deep uncertainty about when, where, and how results will be produced. Federal funding of medical research should take advantage of the trends in society mentioned above and the financial readiness and management competencies of the biomedical research field to identify further reforms to interpret the results we have found more accurately and to deliver a safer, healthier, and more secure future for America.

A very brief overview of The Role of Medical Research in Advancing Healthcare provides: Advances in biomedical science and sociology have created a historically unique opportunity for General Medical Practice and Health Services to help assure the continued acceleration of the Provision of Medical Care to an aging society where the incidence of the necessary emergency distracted from that Provision of Medical Care to the many who can benefit from accessing the health care system to obtain that research-based care. The societal benefits of the medical research enterprise feed into the Provision of Medical Care through the creation and diffusion of knowledge and technology. Researchers have gained these insights using infrastructures, methods, and approaches that frame the construction of new knowledge; the emergence of the contemporary business model of academic health undertakings; and basic health sector industry productivity.

5. The Future of Medical Research: Trends and Opportunities

In examining the trends that will influence the future of medical research and health care, we see that cutting across all challenges is the future role for information technology (IT). As an example, consider the development of telehealth, which promises to bring state-of-the-art medical care right to the patients through video screens, geriatric monitoring, and even virtual homecare for people with strokes. There is likely to be an increasing IT component to agriculture as well, including adaptations of telemedicine, or remote healthcare, to other demanding environments including space and war.

We can anticipate the third generation of biotechnology tools, including new high throughput and high content methods, bioinformatics, and computational predictive technologies. Cellular therapies for regenerative medicine will embody these in breakthrough promises for diabetes, Parkinson’s, neural repair, heart and ocular diseases, and skin and limb replacement. The current increase in understanding the molecular and cellular consortium (omes) and systems-level science promise to disrupt and revolutionize current clinical repair efforts done invasively by incision, drug applications or shots, into the predictable establishment and repair of damaged body parts by sharing knowledge with biology for cures. Fundamental science needs to provide universal solutions, e.g. new medicine’s targeting foreign or molecular challenges, but can have important economic feedbacks in the creation of valuable new techniques, procedures, and products.