U.S., Europe still lead in global R&D efforts

Booz & Co. has crunched the numbers on the 1,000 largest public R&D spenders and concluded that the U.S. still is way out in front among all the countries of the world for research. But the analysis also notes that while India and China are still relatively small players on the R&D front, they're growing fast. And 22 cents out of every R&D buck is being used for research related to health.

Of that money, "about 30 percent of R&D spend is devoted to research, and 70 percent to product development. And for the latter, about two-thirds is spent in emerging markets in order to recruit clinical trial participants cost-effectively. The research side has been slower to establish a presence in emerging markets; in 2007 close to 95 percent of R&D went to drug discovery in the U.S., Europe and Japan."

- check out the press release