How Long After Compliance Do You Benefit From Regulation? An Empirical Study on Diagnostic Imaging Equipment Requirements

Few economic sectors are more regulated than healthcare. While excessive healthcare regulation is a bad thing, regulation compliance brings with it the benefits of market entry, product quality and availability, as well as access to tax rebates and credit benefits. In this paper, we investigate some connections between regulatory compliance and normative technical requirements. We present a multi-company exploratory case study on the variability of mean times-to-benefit after compliance. We focus here on the diagnostic imaging equipment segment and the normative context in Brazil. We show that, in what regards current tax benefit regulations, time-to-benefit depends on the normative technical requirements that different categories of diagnostic imaging equipment comply with. This suggests that product-engineering practices should be concerned not only with analyzing and ensuring compliance, but also with regulation diversity and dynamics.