SciDev.Net's quick guide to technology transfer

SciDev.Net: quick guide to technology transfer

SciDev.Net is introducing a new Quick Guide to Technology Transfer. Technology is (usually codified) knowledge and understanding about how to do things, and so technology transfer is a major subject of this blog, which of course deals with knowledge and understanding for development.

In her introduction to technology transfer, Eva Dantas states (correctly) that the technological knowledge that is transferred can be embodied in goods. Too often it is assumed that technology transfer is primarily embodied in machinery, which is only one form of goods. However, technology can be embodied and transferred even in the form of commodities. Take for example, anti-retroviral drugs used for the treatment of HIV/AIDS. These drugs are the central element of the technology for treating the disease. Note especially, that the capacity to develop such drugs has not been transferred to Africa, nor has the capacity to manufacture the drugs. The drugs themselves embody medical technology.

On the other hand, for these drugs to be utilized well, patients and primary care practitioners have to learn when and how to use them; that means that technological knowledge has to be embodied in both the employees of the health services and their patients.

The health service organizations have to revise diagnostic and prescriptive norms, so that the drugs are prescribed in the right amounts to the right people. The pharmaceutical supply system has to be adapted to supply the drugs to where they are needed, to be available when they are needed. Indeed, the physical infrastructure of the health services may have to be modified and expanded to meet the needs for patient care involved in administering the drugs properly. These changes all might be considered as internalizing the new technology in the health service organizations.

Complementary material inputs are also needed. Thus, new diagnostic technologies (embodied in part in machines and diagnostic reagents) may have to be introduced to increase diagnostic accuracy and efficiency, and to track the evolution of the disease in individuals treated with the drugs. New information and communications technologies may have to be used to educate the public and to help manage the distribution process.

We all know how expensive it will be for the countries of Africa to supply all their HIV/AIDS patients with anti-retroviral drugs. Thus there will have to be major changes in health care financing to allow the technology transferred in the commodity of the drugs to be applied in Africa.

The point I am making is that a bundle of changes must be made as part of a technology transfer, even when that transfer at first glance seems only the acquisition of a commodity embodying the technology. Leave out any element of the bundle, and the transfer may fail, as the transfer of anti-retroviral drug technology to treat HIV/AIDS in Africa is failing for lack of funding as well as for lack of the requisite changes in organizations and human resources. Technology transfer is a complex process, too often mischaracterized as simple!