Diffusion of Medical Innovation: A Case Study of HIV Treatments

This paper uses the OLS regression approach to describe the relationship between supply side and demand side characteristics and diffusion of HIV treatments from 1990-2007. In the past decades, technological advancement has improved the quality of lives of people. There has been extensive study in the area of the pattern of innovation and diffusion of innovation, yet the link between both supply side and demand side characteristics and diffusion of innovation has not been widely discussed. Using longitudinal data from the Multi-Center AIDS Cohort Study (MACS), we find a positive relationship between the quality of HIV treatments and the speed of diffusion and a negative relationship between agents’ health status and the speed of diffusion. We also find several variations of this relationship among sub-populations defined by income, race, higher education, and insurance coverage.Bachelor of Art