Medical technological specializations of central and eastern European regions

Abstract

The article discusses the issues of technological medical specializations in the regions of Central and Eastern Europe. Using a tool in the form of a proprietary concordance table f: IPC→MedTech and the index of relative comparative advantage - Balassa’s Revealed Comparative Advantage - it seeks to answer the question about the trends and dynamics of medical technology in 56 regions of 11 countries which acceded to the European Union after 2003. The main objectives of the research are: The identification of technological medical specializations of regions of Central and Eastern Europe, and evaluation of their differentiation by interregional arrangement. The main findings derived from this research are: (1) The regions with the highest number of medical technology, where comparative advantage is maintained are mainly capital regions, (2) out of the 28 selected fields of medical technology, 10 of them are not developed in the regions covered by the survey.