Go on. Guess! Julian Trent CEO of Peto, the UK-based Amazon-style hub for healthcare purchasing, has compiled all the purchases from 40 of England’s 200-plus Foundation Hospital Trusts. So the correlation between price and volume is…?

Trent claims that there is no statistical correlation between the two. He also points out that there is a variance of 30-60% in the prices paid by Trusts for standard, off-the-shelf, mass products. Trent’s dataset includes everything purchased by these Trusts, whether through Peto or else. In return for providing data, Trusts are told the minimum, average and maximum prices paid for these items by the group of 40.

Trent says that some level of secrecy remains around pricing: “Many large medtech companies will routinely demand that prices remain secret.” Other sources say that the Department of Health in England and Wales is now saying that it will support Trusts that refuse to sign such non-disclosure contracts, but it is not clear how often there is much true resistance from hospital administrators.

The UK government once claimed that the answer for elderly folk being charged exorbitant sums for mobility aids was to insist that prices were published online. Trent is puzzled as to why a similar approach isn’t followed for medtech and pharma outfits selling to hospitals. So are we.