The $136 billion medical device sector is critical to the nations health, providing products for 48 million domestic inpatient procedures every year (Table 1). Although this sector is best known for surgical instruments, cardiology devices, and orthopedic implants, it also includes all of the diagnostic tests and imaging equipment currently used to pinpoint disease and the burgeoning field of companion diagnostics, which are needed to fulfill the promise of personalized medicine (I).Despite the extraordinary importance of devices to human health, there has been no concentrated effort to pursue precompetitive medical device research, which could bring broad benefits to medical device development and review.
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