One would be hard pressed to think of a more ancient branch of knowledge than medicine. Over the centuries, mankind has accumulated a wealth of experience in terms of fighting disease, often through trial and error. Knowledge has been passed on from teacher to student in a learning process spanning many generations.

Recently, of course, digital technologies have found their way into medical diagnosis and surgery, while applied methods have been developed for each branch of medical science. Let us try to assess the situation using the Russian Federation by way of example. From a historical standpoint, it happened that the dawn of the computer age coincided with the breakup of the Soviet Union. It was during this period that the world’s leading producers of medical equipment began to turn their attention to new and emerging markets. For the Western European and American companies that constituted the world’s biggest producers, a new horizon had opened up behind the Iron Curtain. Yet to conquer the market in such vast territories, localization was required. ...