Communication as integral element of biomedical implant innovation

The success of medical implant innovation as a complex field of science and technology requires efforts and strategies in accompanying communication. Fostering public understanding and acceptance of biomedical research and its methods (animal experimentation in particular) is important to counteract wrong assumptions and expectations that journalists, lay people, and (future) patients may hold and that could impede effective take-up of true innovation in the clinical context. Two studies on media coverage of the term “personalized medicine” (n=118 newspaper articles) and on medical implants (n=256 newspaper articles) in Germany (published between 2008 and 2013) illustrate patterns of how journalists offer diverse frames of interpretation to lay audiences. Scholars in biomedical implant innovation and their institutions can benefit from taking these frames into account in order to bridge gaps of missing background knowledge or to counteract overgeneralization of past scandals with (breast) implants. This way, empirically informed communication strategies will satisfy public requirements for transparency and science-public dialogue so that sustainable trust in biomedical implant innovations can evolve.