I would like to do research that would be helpful right away, but a lot of the times you need the longitudinal studies and research in order to come up with the most effective products. You need to have as much information as possible in order to come up with a product. For example, therapies focused on vision require the long term studies that describe the mechanism of how the eyes and their associated muscles and nerves work. If you don’t have the data, trying to develop any type of therapy or device is useless. Knowing exactly how a system works allows you to repair or support it. Though the studies themselves may have not directly helped someone, their work was used to help more people in the long run. If you start with the long term academic research, there is no reason why you wouldn’t be able to use that in order to make a product of your own. A lot of academic research isn’t used to help people, however it’s up to the researcher to decide on what they want to study, which may then be used by others or themselves in the future.