Deciding what technologies to include in the regular practice of medicine, and how they are to be distributed among institutions, is a complex process. This book presents the diffusion of computed tomography scanners, magnetic resonance imaging, megavolt therapy, coronary artery bypass surgery, renal dialysis and transplant, and lithotripters in Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, France, Germany, Greece, Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.
The picture of regulation that emerges is often distant from rational planning, and belies the common American perception that European states are able to exercise strong bureaucratic control over medicine. Surgeons pre-emptively began heart transplants in the Netherlands and United