The impact of market demand, government intervention and environment changes on the output of healthcare research in China

In this paper, we attempt to investigate the impact of market demand, government intervention and environment changes on Chinese healthcare research and productivity. We investigate a large dataset covering healthcare research and publication report over 28 medical sub-disciplines from January 1995 to October 2008 (covering a total of 5,808,894 publications). The results indicate that market, government policy and environment changes are of significant impact on Chinese healthcare research. The impact can both be short-term or long-term in nature. There is clear indication of market failure in supply of healthcare research as a public product. While both within the realm of traditional Chinese healthcare studies, traditional Chinese medicine suffered much more significant impact from globalisation than traditional Chinese pharmacology. To eliminate the negative impact of market failure and deteriorating environment, Chinese Government needs to find a sustainable mechanism of intervention and guidance. More research on the impact of Western/modern culture on authentic Eastern culture is needed in the future.