The Crisis of Capitalism and Health Innovation: Symptoms of a Crisis or of Success?

In this chapter, we examine the issue of the "innovation crisis" and the productivity paradox of advanced capitalist economies by looking at the transformations in the healthcare and pharmaceutical sectors. We show that Fordism and its crisis have had an equivalent in the health sectors, and that a substantial part of the slowdown in productivity gains observed in developed countries is due to a growing share of low-productivity services, including healthcare services. At the same time, the pharmaceutical sector experienced a declining marginal productivity on innovation, called now "Eroom's law". We show that this medical and pharmaceutical Fordism crisis is in fact the consequence of his own success in improving the health and life expectancy of OECD populations. In order to reduce the costs of healthcare systems, a neoliberal regime was put in place. The new strategy now turns to digital health, in the hope of reducing the cost of health services, improving care and solving the problem of medical Fordism crisis beyond pharmaceutical innovation. However, despite hopes and initial successes, this strategy has to prove its efficiency because it could amplify some problems revealed by the neoliberal policy applied to healthcare.