Healthcare Technology Transfer in Sub-Saharan Africa: An Inductive Approach

The research addressed within this paper sets out to develop a framework towards facilitating health-related technology transfer (TT) to and within sub-Saharan African countries. In turn, this framework will attempt to alleviate healthcare burdens in developing nations through a combination of acquisitions and collaborative technology development. Systematic conceptual and comparative literature reviews have been conducted to identify the major characteristics of TT. The conceptual review has outlined the universal characteristics of TT such as TT methods, prominent stakeholders and the importance of knowledge transfer while the systematic comparative review exclusively evaluated sub-Saharan African healthcare TT characteristics such as infrastructure barriers and the marketability of the transfer object. The outcomes of the literature reviews have been clustered into five phases, forming the basis of the conceptual framework. This framework aims to guide a user through the phases of technology development, technology analysis, technology transfer method application, change management and commercialization by providing managerial best practices at each phase. The conceptual framework has been evaluated by incorporating the outcomes of 16 semi-structured interviews conducted with healthcare and TT industry experts. The final framework aims to provide guidelines for any stakeholder involved in healthcare technology transfer regardless of the healthcare implementation by highlighting best practices surrounding stakeholder co-creation, transfer method application and constructing a sustainable healthcare technology transfer venture.