For cost-reducing technologies, knowing markets is to change them

Benefiting from an understanding of economic and political markets includes recognition that engineers themselves can change these environments. Understanding healthcare and other technology markets includes an understanding that the markets sometimes don't just exist-they are altered and sometimes created by the technology. A less expensive and more effective means to monitor a disease such as PKU enhances the likelihood that insurers will cover costs of such monitoring. Recognizing the complexity of economics and policy recognizes that understanding sometimes comes in a burst of insight but more usually, and surely, builds in steps. Since improvements in quality of life are inadequately captured by the market, will political "markets" develop subsidies or regulations to encourage technology?.