About
From Innovation to users (and back)
Global health technologies, such as vaccines, diagnostic tools and antibiotics, have shaped the last century of medical advances, leading to globally increased life expectancy and crucial improvements in quality of life. Technologies continue to develop at breath-taking speed and redraw the boundaries between life and death.
However, in practice many technological advances cannot unfold their full potential due to limitations in availability and uptake. Technologies are embedded in a dense web of legal, ethical, infrastructural and societal requirements meant to ensure their utility and safe use.
In the global health context, however, technologies are often needed in regions with weak infrastructures, governance and regulatory institutions, exposing them to the risks of misguided use and poor integration into health systems and everyday practices of health-seeking behaviors. The key challenge, then, is to identify who or what can safeguard, guide and foster the use of (new) technologies when these are often only loosely embedded in commercial and regulatory forces of markets, governmental bodies and consumer attitudes.
Aim
The Research Unit takes this challenge as a starting point and proposes to focus on the users of global health technologies. Putting users (end users, regulatory, governmental, commercial) center stage will allow to close the gap between the (imagined) potentials of novel technologies and the particularities of different contexts of use.
Overarching Research Questions
- 1
What key factors influence how new technologies are adopted and adapted in settings with limited resources?
- 2
To what extent does the development and uptake of new technologies depend on a clear understanding of local user needs and practices?
- 3
Through what kinds of interactions and mechanisms do relationships between users and technologies take shape in environments with minimal regulatory oversight?
- 4
How can transdisciplinary approaches help navigate and reconcile different expectations and visions for how health technologies should be used?
Case Studies Along the Technology Life Cycle
A consistent cycle underlies the development and implementation of novel technologies: research and development is followed by a prototype, and then by practical implementation. In case studies, researchers from the Research Unit will monitor each of these three stages on-site. While the vaccine program in Accra, Ghana, addresses hurdles in the implementation phase of technologies, the case study with focus on participatory design of technologies for mental health is placed right at the start of the development process. A third case study accompanies the development of prototypes designed to improve the diagnosis of infections caused by antibiotic-resistant pathogens and antibiotic stewardship globally.
Vision
Research Landscape and Internationalization Strategy
Research Landscapes
Through trans- and interdisciplinary research, we aim to develop, test, and explore technologies that enable communities, respect cultural contexts, and align with ethical principles of governance and equity within the global health landscape. For each of our case study we envision:
- Enabling bottom-up design approaches in mental wellbeing, we center users, their needs and understanding of mental wellbeing, as well as technological and design requirements through an innovative research & development framework.
- Focusing on an encompassing prototype testing that does not merely center on the technological capacities, but includes the usage contexts in their real-life settings through the methodology of living laboratories, we ‘socialize’, and bring it closer to clinical and laboratory practices and conditions on the ground.
- Through expanding classical health assessment tools in global health, such as the HTA, we aim to develop an overarching analysis of vaccine implementation that combines economic, infrastructural and behavioral factors of technology adaption (or rejection), and thus is able to provide an encompassing picture of technology implementation, sourced from truly interdisciplinary knowledge production.
Internationalization Strategy
- Increases and enhances international relationships based on equitable partnerships.
- Promotes and extends collaborative research: international collaborators are named as Principal Investigators.
- Builds robust network of research partners, universities and public health institutions.
- Invests into long-term partnerships based on equality and recognition: driven by co-development, mutual interests and shared benefits.
Towards more equitable partnerships in Global Health
We aspire to significantly contribute to advancing equitable partnerships in global health and commit to researching jointly as a trusted partner.
The research topic was co-developed with African research partners.
We extend research practices and shared learnings, beyond our usual institutional, regional, and national borders.
Innovative technologies require a profound understanding of its users in order to address the increasing challenges posed by infectious and non-communicable diseases.
We engage with international networks, global funders and industry partners.
To establish and operationalize equitable partnsherships within the research project we design a M&E tool, providing practical and pragmatic guidance.
We aim to strengthen equitable and sustainable collaborations between Berlin and African institutions.