The Medical Device and Laboratory Product Problem Reporting Program.

Health care technology, those objects and techniques used in health care practice, is so important and customary today, it is difficult to realize that not too long ago physicians had few beneficial devices, drugs, or procedures to offer patients. It was only in the nineteenth century that advances in diagnosis, marked by the invention of the stethoscope, and in therapy, denoted by the introduction of ether anesthesia, inaugurated the era of modern medicine. Over the century and a half that followed, we developed an extra-ordinary armory of diagnostic and therapeutic tools, which have significantly improved life expectancy and raised the quality of life for countless persons all over the world. These advances also have created ethical, economic, organizational, and political problems concerning their appropriate use and distribution.