There are over 7,000 known diseases. Treatments exist for 500 of them. Americans have always been an innovative and industrious people. Many breakthroughs across all industries throughout the 20th and 21st centuries were pioneered by Americans. Why then, is there a lack of innovation and movement in healthcare now?
That is the question the 21st Century Cures Initiative seeks to answer. The initiative examines the “discovery-development-delivery” cycle for treatments – the process of how better treatments can get to patients quicker. Whether it is from medical devices or medicine, treatments for patients suffering from chronic and rare diseases must be discovered on the ground level through basic science, then developed into a practical, usable, and marketable product, and finally delivered to the patients so the treatment may be effectively utilized.
This is not a partisan issue. Getting better treatments to patients quicker is not political, because chronic and rare diseases do not discriminate based on political affiliation.
– Representative Gus Bilirakis (R-Fla.) writing for The Hill