Patently Innovative? Re-interpreting the history of industrial medicine

利兹大学科学史和科学哲学中心与利兹的萨克雷博物馆合作，旨在使博物馆关于医疗技术创新的大量藏品更广泛地获得。这个项目将是知识交流和知识转移一样多，因为它将包括HPS的大学研究人员带来他们先前研究的知识和方法，而Thackray博物馆的工作人员将带来他们的藏品知识和非学术受众的知识和交流方法。博物馆的馆长和教育人员将在使用专利数据和解释有关医疗技术发展的信息方面发展新的知识和技能，这将提高他们为一系列目标受众解释医疗创新历史的能力。反过来，大学研究人员将通过参与受众咨询工作和为非学术受众制作口译材料，在利用研究产生公共成果方面获得新的技能和理解。主要研究是最近完成的AHRC资助的项目拥有和放弃发明：1870-1930年期间英国科学和技术中的知识产权、权威和身份。这项研究探讨了电子技术领域的一些创新者申请专利的动机，而另一些创新者则从事“开放”的公开共享创新。专利不受单一战略的支配，也不具有简单的含义：它可以是为了盈利、支持研究、支持家庭、吸引资本投资、开发商业讨价还价工具或保护创意资产不受掠夺性竞争对手的攻击。其他创新没有获得专利的原因也是多种多样的：它们不够创新，不足以获得法律保护；专利申请的成本无法从使用费或诉讼中收回；它构成了对知识的非法垄断；或者创新应该无私地分享给公共利益，或保护“绅士”地位。其中最后一个是许多医生的典型战略，如最近完成的两篇博士论文所示，该知识交流项目将借鉴这两篇博士论文。Annie Jamieson博士的论文表明，在20世纪将未获专利的X射线和紫外线灯引入医疗和诊断通常是为了满足明确和公共的患者需求。然而，克莱尔·琼斯博士关于贸易目录的论文《在商业和专业之间》表明，当代电气行业推广用于照明、治疗和助听的专利设备主要是出于宣传和利润的动机。这三个已完成的研究项目的成果将首先应用于Thackray收藏品中的三件电子文物，以展示自19世纪末以来，专利的工业过程如何进入主流医疗保健领域：助听器、电疗、X射线相关设备。这将揭示现有医学博物馆展品的局限性，这些展品只涉及18世纪和19世纪的非正统(庸医)“专利药物”，或者只是指冷战时代或21世纪后遗症的高科技生物活体。因此，这个知识转移项目填补了传统博物馆叙事的空白，使萨克雷博物馆能够向许多参观者解释，医学创新至少有时是由工业需求而不是医疗保健医生的人道主义愿望外部驱动的。这将使这些博物馆参观者能够批判性地反思他们自己在先进技术医学及其历史发展方面的经历，询问卫生保健领域的知识产权增长在多大程度上集中在满足患者的需求上，或者相反地放在扩大制造利润上。

The Centre for the History and Philosophy of Science, University of Leeds, collaborating with the Thackray Museum in Leeds aim to render more broadly accessible the museum's very substantial collections on innovation in medical technology. This project will be as much Knowledge Exchange as Knowledge Transfer since it will involve university researchers in HPS bringing knowledge and methods from their prior research, while Thackray Museum staff will bring their collections knowledge and knowledge of non-academic audiences and methods of communication. The museum's curatorial and education staff will develop new knowledge and skills in using patent data and interpreting information about developments in healthcare technology, which will improve their ability to interpret the history of medical innovations for a range of target audiences. Reciprocally University researchers will gain new skills and understanding in using research to generate public outputs, through involvement in audience consultation work and production of interpretation material for non-academic audiences. The principal research drawn upon is the recently completed AHRC-funded project Owning & Disowning Invention: intellectual property, authority and identity in British Science and Technology in the period 1870-1930. That explored the motivations for some innovators in electrical technology to patent innovations while others engaged in 'open' publicly shared innovation. Patenting was not governed by a single strategy nor did it have a simple meaning: it could be for profit, to sustain research, to support families, to attract capital investment, to develop commercial bargaining tools or to protect creative assets against predatory rivals. Other innovations went unpatented for similarly diverse reasons: they were not innovative enough to secure legal protection; the costs of patenting could not feasibly be recouped from royalties or litigation; it constituted an illegitimate monopoly of knowledge; or that innovations ought to be shared altruistically for the public good, or to protect 'gentlemanly' status. The last of these was the typical strategy of many medical practitioners as illustrated in the two recently completed PhD theses to be drawn upon for this knowledge exchange project. Dr Annie Jamieson's thesis shows that the introduction of unpatented X-rays and ultra-violet lamps to medical therapy and diagnosis in the 1900s was often to meet explicit and public patient demand. Dr Claire Jones' thesis 'Between Commerce and Professionalism' on trade catalogues shows, however, that the contemporary electrical industry promoted patented devices for lighting, therapeutics and hearing assistance in medicine driven primarily by motives of publicity and profit. The outcomes of these three completed research projects will be applied initially to three electrical artefacts in the Thackray collections to show how the industrial process of patenting entered mainstream healthcare from the late nineteenth century: hearing aids, electrotherapy, X-ray related apparatus. This will reveal the limitations of existing medical museum exhibits that refer only to the heterodox (quack) 'patent medicines' of the 18th and 19th centuries or simply to the hi-tech biopatenting characteristic of the Cold War era or its 21st century aftermath. This Knowledge Transfer project thus fills in the gap in the conventional museum narrative, enabling the Thackray Museum to explain to its many visitors how innovation in medicine has at least sometimes been driven extrinsically by industrial imperatives rather than by the humanitarian aspirations of physicians in healthcare. This will enable such museum visitors to reflect critically on their own experiences of advanced technologized medicine and its historical development, to ask how far the growth of intellectual property in healthcarehas centred on meeting patients' needs or instead on magnifying the profits of manufacture.