Health care
(often health care in American English), is the treatment and management of illness, and the preservation of health through services offered by the medical, dental, complementary and alternative medicine, pharmaceutical, clinical laboratory sciences (in vitro diagnostics), nursing, and allied health professions. Health care embraces all the goods and services designed to promote health, including “preventive, curative and palliative interventions, whether directed to individuals or to populations”
Before the term health care became popular, English-speakers referred to medicine or to the health sector and spoke of the treatment and prevention of illness and disease.
Provision
A health-care provider is a person or organization that provides services and/or health-care personnel todeliver proper health care in a systematic way to any individual in need of health-care services. A health-care provider could be a government, the health-care industry, a health-care equipment company, an institution such as a hospital or medical laboratory. Health-care professionals may include physicians, dentists, support staff, nurses, therapists, psychologists,pharmacologists, pharmacists, chiropractors, and optometrists.Practicing health care without a license is generally a serious crime that could be punished by up to several years in prison.
The delivery of modern health care depends on an expanding group of trained professionals coming together as an interdisciplinary team.
The health-care industry incorporates several sectors that are dedicated to providing services and products dedicated to improving the health of individuals. According to market classifications of industry such as the Global Industry Classification Standard and the Industry Classification Benchmark the health-care industry includes health care equipment & services and pharmaceuticals, biotechnology & life sciences. The particular sectors associated with these groups are: biotechnology, diagnostic substances, drug delivery, drug manufacturers, hospitals, medical equipment and instruments, diagnostic laboratories, nursing homes, providers of health care plans andhome health care.
According to government classifications of Industry, which are mostly based on the United Nations system, the International Standard Industrial Classification, health care generally consists of Hospital activities, Medical and dental practice activities, and other human health activities. The last class consists of all activities for human health not performed by hospitals or by medical doctors or dentists. This involves activities of, or under the supervision of, nurses, midwives, physiotherapists, scientific or diagnostic laboratiories, pathology clinics, ambulance, nursing home, or other para-medical practitioners in the field of optometry, hydrotherapy, medical massage, occupational therapy, speech therapy, chiropody, homeopathy, chiropractice, acupuncture, etc.
Research
Top impact factor academic journals in the health care field include Health Affairs and Milbank Quarterly. The New England Journal of Medicine, British Medical Journal, and the Journal of the American Medical Association are more general journals.
Biomedical research (or experimental medicine), in general simply known as medical research, is the basic research, applied research, or translational research conducted to aid the body of knowledge in the field of medicine. Medical research can be divided into two general categories: the evaluation of new treatments for both safety and efficacy in what are termed clinical trials, and all other research that contributes to the development of new treatments. The latter is termed preclinical research if its goal is specifically to elaborate knowledge for the development of new therapeutic strategies. A new paradigmto biomedical research is being termed translational research, which focuses on iterative feedback loops between the basic and clinical research domains to accelerate knowledge translation from the bedside to the bench, and back again.
In terms of pharmaceutical R&D spending, Europe spends a little less that the United States (€22.50bn compared to €27.05bn in 2006) and there is less growth in European R&D spending.[6][7] Pharmaceuticals and other medical devices are the leading high technology exports of Europe and the United States. However, the United States dominates the biopharmaceutical field, accounting for the three quarters of the world’s biotechnology revenues and 80% of world R&D spending in biotechnology.
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