The Business of Health: New Approaches to the Evolution of Health Systems in the World

This book offers a discussion about the dramatic development of healthcare business around the world during the twentieth century. Through a broad range of cases in Asia, Europe and the US, it shows how health was transformed into a fast-growing and diversified industry.

Health and medicine have developed as one of the fastest growing sectors of the economy around the world during the twentieth century. However, very little is known about the conditions of their transformation in a big, globalized business. This book discusses the development of health industries, tackling the various activities in manufacturing (drugs, biotechnology, medical devices, etc.), infrastructure (hospital design and construction) and services (nursing care, insurances, hospital management, etc.) in relation to healthcare. The business history of health carried out in this book offers a systemic perspective that includes the producers (companies), practitioners (medical doctors) and users (patients and hospitals) of medical technology, as well as the providers of capital and the bodies responsible for regulating the health system (government).

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal Business History.

Pierre-Yves Donzé is Professor of Business History at Osaka University, Japan, and Visiting Professor at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. He is co-editor of the journal Business History. His research focuses on the history of the global dynamics of industries (hospitals and medtech, watchmaking, fashion and luxury).

Paloma Fernández Pérez is Professor of Economic and Business History at Universitat de Barcelona. She is former co-editor of the journal, Business History and co-editor of the Journal of Evolutionary Studies in Business. Fernández Pérez is an expert in history of entrepreneurship in industries and services. Her most recent book is The Emergence of Modern Hospital Management and Organization in the World 1880s-1930s (2021).