Under the prevailing intellectual property logic of “patent protection-market pricing”, outputs from public hospitals—such as clinical guidelines, diagnostic and therapeutic protocols, and management tools—cannot secure patent rights due to the lack of a suitable valuation framework. This situation traps these outputs in a dilemma of high social value but low economic return. These “non-patentable, difficult-to-price” clinical knowledge products not only undermine hospitals' incentives for innovation but also, more critically, due to the absence of payer-recognizable evidentiary forms and standardized vehicles, struggle to enter the healthcare payment and regulatory systems. Consequently, clinical knowledge that could enhance efficacy, standardize practices, and optimize costs fails to translate into fund utilization efficiency, thereby hindering the realization of “value-based healthcare”. To address this, this paper, grounded in public goods and public value theory, introduces the concept of “clinical public goods” and constructs a hierarchical classification system for clinical knowledge outputs. Patentable outputs like pharmaceuticals continue to follow the traditional intellectual property asset logic, while items such as clinical guidelines, pathways, management models, and quantitative tools fall under the category of clinical public goods. Building on this, the paper proposes a dual-track governance framework of “intellectual property assets-clinical public goods”. Clinical public goods are further classified into evidence-based, standard-setting, management, and tool-oriented types, with their value realized through institutional adoption and scaled implementation leading to health gains. To promote value translation, the paper designs a three-pronged pathway: “policy access-data assetization-rights licensing”. Policy access opens institutional entry points, compliant data governance provides a sound evidence base, and rights licensing coupled with service delivery facilitates standardized dissemination and sustainable supply. This pathway provides a clear and actionable operational solution for identifying, governing, and incentivizing non-patent clinical outputs in research-oriented hospitals.
Key words
clinical public goods /
non-patent clinical outputs /
dual-track governance /
value conversion /
healthcare payment
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