Orthopaedic Surgeons and the Medical Device Industry

the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), and others to the specific challenges confronting the specialty of orthopaedic surgery.Further, it strives to reconcile the duty and value propositions associated with the orthopaedic surgeon-medical device company relationship, with the persistent risks that are attendant to that relationship, and to develop a new path-one that strives to restore the integrity of scientific investigation and day-today clinical decision making, while providing justification for future physician-industry interaction.To consider the topic in perspective, it is interesting to assess the origins of the current model of physicianindustry interaction as they relate specifically to the issues currently confronting the specialty of orthopaedic surgery.In 1980, novel legislation in the field of intellectual property, the Bayh-Dole Act, for the first time allowed universities and nonprofit organizations to replace the government as the principal beneficiaries of commercial development resulting from basicscience and clinical research.In essence, the act transferred the ownership of discoveries made with the help of