Correspondence: Alan Brown, Multidisciplinary Assessment of Technology Centre for Healthcare Nanotechnology and Integrated Bioengineering Centre (NIBEC) University of Ulster Shore Road, Newtownabbey BT37 0QB, Northern Ireland. Tel: +44 28 9036 8925; Fax: +44 28 9036 6863; E-mail: a.brown@ulster.ac.uk

¹is a research fellow on the MATCH programme at the University of Ulster. He joined the University after nine years in industry, where he worked in manufacturing and new product management in the high-technology sector. He holds an MEng in Chemical Engineering from Imperial College of Science Technology and Medicine. His current research interests include optimising business processes and new product development with specific interest in Tissue Engineering applications.

²is Director of the MATCH hub at the University of Ulster. He holds the chair in Biomedical Materials and leads the Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering group at NIBEC. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (CChem, FRSC), a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Medicine in Ireland and is the past-President of the UK Society for Biomaterials.

³joined Brunel in 2001 after 16½ years in industry to develop concepts around value propositions, especially for information and communication, in healthcare delivery. He is the Principal Investigator of the £3.6m MATCH programme, a collaboration between five universities that is developing new methods for valuing products and assessing user needs in the healthcare devices sector.

Received 5 February 2007; Revised 5 February 2007.

Abstract

The 'experience curve' shows a consistent relationship between the cost (or price) of a product, and the total production volume to that point and is observable for a wide range of products, often over surprisingly long periods of time. Evidence is presented here to indicate that medical devices also follow such curves. The benefits to be gained from wider use of such curves by manufacturers and by health technology assessment organisations, particularly for reimbursement, are presented.