Patently Innovative? Re-interpreting the history of industrial medicine

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.

The purpose of this Knowledge Transfer project will be to communicate completed HPS research on patenting history to the Thackray Museum's existing, non-academic, target audiences: the general public and school groups. The museum attracts around 72,000 visitors each year, who learn about the history of medicine using the material evidence of the medical supply trades. While the majority of general public visitors are drawn from within a one-hour drive to the museum, school groups travel from across the north of England and the Midlands. Wider audiences are reached through the museum's website. The Thackray Museum is also the lead member of the UK Medical Collections Group, through which the findings of this research can be disseminated to the vast majority of the UK's medical museums.

The PI's patent history and related research by Jones and Jamieson will feed directly into the museum's work to inform the museum's research and interpretation of its collections of medical technology. While the focus of the existing research has been on historical interpretations of patenting, the museum's key interest lies in explaining developments in healthcare technology to a series of target audiences from primary school children to family groups and senior citizens. This knowledge exchange project will apply the existing research and methods gleaned from research on patents and technologizing healthcare to this broader public concern with medical innovation; it will thus provide an intellectual foundation for the museum's research for the redevelopment of its permanent galleries, in particular for a new gallery on medical innovation.

The museum's audience research in 2010 indicates an interest by audiences in moving away from a focus on disease and illness to explore the more positive aspects of medicine and healthcare, and incorporate more opportunities for debate. This project can contribute to that development by exploring the issue of how medical innovations are developed, and the processes of collaboration between patients, medical practitioners and the medical supply trade. The use of patenting lies at the core of the ethical debate around whether medical innovation is driven by profit for the medical industry or care for patients.

Museum audiences are intrigued by these kind of debates which can engage everyone from school age audiences to elderly visitors in opinions about the balance between an entrepreneurial spirit and medical advancement. A wider public interest in these questions is frequently evidenced by media stories, for example about patenting of proprietary drugs, and medicine in general being made into a profitable industry rather than a system of care driven by patient needs. The methodology and activities involved in the Knowledge Transfer project will test these ideas further, identifying through audience focus groups exactly where the existing research links into public interest.

The museum's new gallery on medical innovation will also form the cornerstone of the museum's relationship with the contemporary medical industry. The museum seeks to maintain active links with present day medical manufacturing companies as well as collecting and interpreting their history. The medical innovation gallery will provide a public platform for showcasing new developments in healthcare technology currently reaching the marketplace.

In addition to these benefits in creating new knowledge for the museum's visitors, this KT project will benefit:

i) Museum staff: who would have enhanced skills in research on both object holdings and patents held in their archives - this would manifest in enhanced interpretation and display materials used in both catalogue and exhibits.

ii) The Knowledge Transfer Fellow: who would experience career enhancement in terms of acquiring skills in museological interpretation