Of industry sponsored research, pharmaceutical firm spending was the greatest contributor from all industry sponsored biomedical research spending, but only increased 15% (adjusted for inflation) from 2003 to 2007, while device and biotechnology firms accounted for the majority of the spending. The stock performance, a measure that can be an indication of future firm growth or technological direction, has substantially increased for both predominantly medical device and biotechnology producers. Contributing factors to this growth are thought to be less rigorous FDA approval requirements for devices as opposed to drugs, lower cost of trials, lower pricing and profitability of products and predictable influence of new technology due to a limited number of competitors. Another visible shift during the era was a shift in focus to late stage research trials; formerly dispersed, since 1994 an increasingly large portion of industry-sponsored research was late phase trials rather than early-experimental phases now accounting for the majority of industry sponsored research. This shift is attributable to a lower risk investment and a shorter development to market schedule. The low risk preference is also reflected in the trend of large pharmaceutical firms acquiring smaller companies that hold patents to newly developed drug or device discoveries which have not yet passed federal regulation (large companies are mitigating their risk by purchasing technology created by smaller companies in early-phase high-risk studies). Medical research support from universities increased from $22 billion in 2003 to $27.7 billion in 2007, a 7.8% increase (adjusted for inflation). In 2007 the most heavily funded institutions received 20% of HIN medical research funding, and the top 50 institutions received 58% of NIH medical research funding, the percent of funding allocated to the largest institutions is a trend which has increased only slightly over data from 1994. Relative to federal and private funding, health policy and service research accounted for a nominal amount of sponsored research; health policy and service research was funded $1.8 billion in 2003, which increased to $2.2 billion in 2008.