Give your personal and critical view of National Innovation System (NIS) in US. ( Why it is important, government component of NIS , why it is important biomedical industry in the US etc..)

Over the last several decades, the United States has experienced major gains in overall life expectancy and health status. Biomedical innovation has played a vital role in enabling these gains, by advancing our ability to prevent, treat and diagnose disease. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the largest non-commercial funder of biomedical research in the US. Today, the US has the strongest research and development system in the world. Measured by the net amount of spending for or the number of persons employed in R&D the U.S. technology and science enterprise is the largest in the world. It is also the most successful.

The industry has grown at a significant pace with the US, emerging as a important centre of innovation. The biotechnology industry stands at the confluence of multiple technologies- molecular biology, genetics, chemistry and combinatorial bioinformatics. In conjunction with technological diversity, the biotechnology industry also demonstrates geographic diversity with considerable variation across national systems of biotechnology innovation.

The U.S. is also a leader in R&D investment in medical devices. R&D spending among medical technology firms in the U.S. was twice the average of all industries. U.S. R&D expenditures equalled nearly 13 percent of medical device sales, compared to the EU and Japan, where they were approximately 8 percent.

The US state created a permissive patenting regime with the capacity to support and enhance its ambitions for a global biomedical industry. Such is the power of the US easily to sustain its position when measured on all the primary indicators of innovation capacity in this field: R&D investment, concentration of research, scientific workforce, supporting IP laws, venture capital investment and potential healthcare market.

The institutional arrangements in the USA constitute a self-contained market driven system that is highly functional in behind biotechnology innovation, and helps explain present American dominance in this technological sector. In addition, the USA has a strong tradition in pharmaceutical R&D, prompting a large number of established firms to form relationships with startup biotechnology firms in order to gain access to these new scientific advances.

For example, the focus on biopharmaceutical applications in the US is due to the underlying commercial orientation of the American system and the prospect of high commercial value given by therapeutic drugs created in this sector. Not only the choice of a particular technological arena such as biopharmaceuticals, but also the following development and accumulation of knowledge in this arena ( such as the emphasis on high value therapeutic drugs) is determined by the national system.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) invests over $30 billion yearly in biomedical research, 80% of which is awarded through approximately 50,000 competitive grants to more than 300,000 researchers at over 2,500 universities, medical schools, and other research, institutions. Roughly, 10 % of the NIH budget supports research conducted by nearly 6,000 scientists in its own laboratories. These investments are aimed to foster creative discoveries and research strategies and their applications as a basis for protecting and improving human health, and to expend the medical knowledge base to enhance the Nation's economic well-being and continued high return on the public investment in research.

Recent trends in the structure of US R&D performance and spending parallel trends in other OECD economies. Like the innovation systems of other OECD economies, government policy, industrial R&D strategies, and international competition have produced important structural change in the US. Federal R&D spending was dominated by basic research (particularly in the biomedical sciences), and research in defense-related technologies. Federal and state governments invested little in programs designed to help firms in adopting technology, which may have contributed to the relatively slow adoption by US manufacturing firms of advanced manufacturing technologies.

Federal support of biomedical research more than 20$ billion in fiscal year 2001 for the National Instutues of Health and research investments by manufacturers and other private companies stimulate the development of new technologies and approaches to health care, each of which has consequences for health expenditures and outcomes. For profit corporations invest in research because they expect it to lead to the development of biomedical goods and services that will bring future revenues and profits.

The U.S. Government supports the Nation's R&D system through several policy tools. The most direct is Federal funding of R&D. Federal support for U.S. R&D spans a range of broad objectives. In 2009, defense was the largest of the R&D budget functions, accounting for 55% of the total.

An innovation system will be defined as a network of organizations focused on bringing new products, new processes, and new forms of organization into economic and social use, together with the institutions and policies that affect their behavior and performance.