From a ReadWriteWeb article:

Dr. J. Deane Waldman, Professor of Pediatrics, Pathology & Decision Science at the University of New Mexico said the industry has three disincentives to innovation that will partly suppress the effect of Moore‘s law, including:

  1. Regulatory oversight that is completely focussed on compliance. “It discourages risk-taking and innovation,” Deane said.
  2. Health care doesn‘t have the same financial reward system. Facebook isn‘t about to pay $1 billion for the latest hot-ticket item in imaging and informatics.
  3. And, finally, Deane said, “Security always trumps information sharing, and so better, faster linkages are constrained because of security concerns, most of which are bogus.”

One of the other big problems is that, unlike other industries, new technologies in health care are not driven by consumer demand. It‘s up to doctors and hospitals to decide whether to implement the latest and greatest piece of health care tech.

“Consumers can be expected to embrace digital health tools more quickly, and this will drive a demand for improvement that should increase the pace of institutional change,” said Robert B. McCray, president and CEO of the Wireless-Life Sciences Alliance. “There is great economic resistance to change, however, and more trade protections in health care, so institutional and professional resistance, rather than technology, are the limiting factors in the creation of ‘better health care‘.”