Hospitals and innovation: Introduction to the special section

Model for managing scientific research in a public hospital: case study: Chilean National Cancer Institute, from 2015-2022

Research is an essential element in the practice of healthcare, and hospitals play a fundamental role in its promotion. Research in hospitals can improve the quality of care, knowledge of diseases and the discovery of new therapies. Hospitals can conduct research in various fields, including basic research, clinical research, population-based research and even hospital management research. The findings of hospital research can be directly applied to clinical practice and management, thereby enhancing the quality of patient care, a central paradigm in translational health. This article details the experience of the National Cancer Institute of Chile over the past 8 years in its role as a high-complexity public hospital, specialised institute, healthcare centre, teaching institution, and research facility. It reviews the work of generating and strengthening its institutional research model since its redesign in 2018, the key elements that underpin it, and discusses the challenges the institute faces in its growth amidst the increasing cancer epidemiology in Chile, the recent enactment of a National Cancer Law, the post-pandemic scenario that has left a significant waiting list of oncology patients, and the initiation of the design and construction process for the new institute building.

Innovation in crisis: The role of 'exaptive relations' for medical device development in response to COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in huge disruption to the healthcare sector. In response to this, there have been collaborative efforts between many different public and private organizations to foster medical innovations. The effect of crisis upon innovation, particularly medical innovation, remains a debatable subject. In addition, the role of inter-personal relations is becoming more widely acknowledged as a critical feature of innovation. Drawing upon exaptation literature, the study aims to understand the nature of the micro-relations within medical innovations that are undertaken in response to COVID-19. The findings of this paper contribute to the limited literature that examines the performance of medical innovation in response to crisis. In addition to confirming the importance of exaptive pools, exaptive events, and exaptive forums in fostering serendipitous developments, the study makes a contribution to theory by identifying a further form of serendipitous encounter that is 'exaptive relations'.

The Barriers of the Assistive Robotics Market-What Inhibits Health Innovation?

Demographic changes are putting the healthcare industry under pressure. However, while other industries have been able to automate their operation through robotic and autonomous systems, the healthcare sector is still reluctant to change. What makes robotic innovation in healthcare so difficult? Despite offering more efficient, and consumer-friendly care, the assistive robotics market has lacked penetration. To answer this question, we have broken down the development process, taking a market transformation perspective. By interviewing assistive robotics companies at different business stages from France and the UK, this paper identifies new insight into the main barriers of the assistive robotics market that are inhibiting the sector. Their impact is analysed during the different stages of the development, exploring how these barriers affect the planning, conceptualisation and adoption of these solutions. This research presents a foundation for understanding innovation barriers that high-tech ventures face in the healthcare industry, and the need for public policy measures to support these technology-based firms.

ITEMAS ontology for healthcare technology innovation

BACKGROUND

The Platform for Innovation in Medical and Health Technologies (ITEMAS) is a network of 66 healthcare centres focused on fostering innovation in medical and health technologies as an essential tool for increasing the sustainability of the Spanish healthcare system. The present research is focused on defining a formal representation that details the most relevant concepts associated with the creation and adoption of innovative medical technology in the Spanish healthcare system.

METHODS

The methodology applied is based on the methontology process, including peer-review identification and selection of concepts from the ITEMAS innovation indicators and innovation management system standards. This stage was followed by an iterative validation process. Concepts were then conceptualised, formalised and implemented in an ontology.

RESULTS

The ontology defined describes how relationships between employees, organisations, projects and ideas can be applied to generate results that are transferrable to the market, general public and scientific forums. Overall, we identified 136 concepts, 138 object properties and 30 properties in a five-level hierarchy. The ontology was tested and validated as an appropriate framework for calculating the ITEMAS innovation indicators.

CONCLUSIONS

The consensus concepts were expressed in the form of an ontology to be used as a single communication format between the members of the ITEMAS network. Healthcare centres can compare their innovation results and obtain a better understanding of their innovation context based on the reasoning techniques of artificial intelligence. As a result, they can benefit from advanced analytical capabilities to define the most appropriate innovation policies for each centre based on the common experience of the large number of healthcare centres involved. The results can be used to create a map of agents and knowledge to show capabilities, projects and services provided by each of the participating centres. The ontology could also be applied as an instrument to match needs with existing projects and capabilities from the community of organisations working in healthcare technology innovation.

Twenty-first century macro-trends in the institutional fabric of science: bibliometric monitoring and analysis

Some say that world science has become more ‘applied’, or at least more ‘application-oriented’, in recent years. Replacing the ill-defined distinction between ‘basic research’ and ‘applied research’, we introduce ‘research application orientation’ domains as an alternative conceptual and analytical framework for examining research output growth patterns. To distinguish possible developmental trajectories we define three institutional domains: ‘university’, ‘industry’, ‘hospitals’. Our macro-level bibliometric analysis takes a closer look at general trends within and across some 750 of the world’s largest research-intensive universities. To correct for database changes, our time-series analysis was applied to both a fixed journal set (same research journals and conference proceedings over time) and a dynamic journal set (changing set of publication outlets). We find that output growth in the ‘hospital research orientation’ has significantly outpaced the other two application domains, especially since 2006/2007. This happened mainly because of the introduction of new publication outlets in the WoS, but also partially because some universities—especially in China—seem to have become more visible in this domain. Our analytical approach needs further broadening and deepening to provide a more definitive answer whether hospitals and the medical sector are becoming increasingly dominant as a domain of scientific knowledge production and an environment for research applications.