Several countries have successfully reduced their COVID-19 infection rate early, while others have been overwhelmed. The reasons for the differences are complex, but response efficacy has in part depended on the speed and scale of governmental intervention and how communities have received, perceived, and acted on the information provided by governments and other agencies. While there is no ‘one size fits all’ communications strategy to deliver information during a prolonged crisis, in this article, we draw on key findings from scholarship in multiple social science disciplines to highlight some fundamental characteristics of effective governmental crisis communication. We then present ten recommendations for effective communication strategies to engender maximum support and participation. We argue that an effective communication strategy is a two-way process that involves clear messages, delivered via appropriate platforms, tailored for diverse audiences, and shared by trusted people. Ultimately, the long-term success depends on developing and maintaining public trust. We outline how government policymakers can engender widespread public support and participation through increased and ongoing community engagement. We argue that a diversity of community groups must be included in engagement activities. We also highlight the implications of emerging digital technologies in communication and engagement activities.

Deep brain stimulation involves using a pacemaker-like device to deliver constant electrical stimulation to problematic areas within the brain. It has been used to treat over 40,000 people with Parkinson’s disease and essential tremor worldwide and is currently undergoing clinical trials as a treatment for depression and obsessive–compulsive disorder. This article will provide an historical account of deep brain stimulation in order to illustrate the plurality of interests involved in the development and stabilization of deep brain stimulation technology. Using Latour’s notion of immutable mobiles, this article will illustrate the importance of clinical assessment tools in shaping technological development in the era of medical device regulation. Given that such tools can serve commercial and professional interests, this article suggests that it is necessary to scrutinise their application in research contexts to ensure that they capture clinical changes that are meaningful for patients and their families. This is particularly important in relation to potentially ethically problematic therapies such as deep brain stimulation for psychiatric disorders.

This paper explores and develops the concept of 'readiness' as it relates to the adoption of innovation. In particular, the paper discusses readiness in regard to the notion of 'technology readiness' levels, widely used today by both producers and users to monitor and manage emergent innovation. The paper argues that, while useful, this notion needs to be informed by and subsumed within a broader concept of 'institutional readiness'. The latter is especially important in conceptualising how new technologies are actually adopted in organisational settings. The paper develops a model of institutional readiness that recognises the saliency of technology readiness but which embeds it within a broader sociotechnical framework. This is illustrated with reference to the emerging field of regenerative medicine.

Regenerative medicine (RM) is championed as a potential source of curative treatments for a variety of illnesses, and as a generator of economic wealth and prosperity. Alongside this optimism, however, is a sense of concern that the translation of basic science into useful RM therapies will be laboriously slow due to a range of challenges relating to live tissue handling and manufacturing, regulation, reimbursement and commissioning, and clinical adoption. This paper explores the attempts of stakeholders to overcome these innovation challenges and thus facilitate the emergence of useful RM therapies. The paper uses the notion of innovation niches as an analytical frame. Innovation niches are collectively constructed socio-technical spaces in which a novel technology can be tested and further developed, with the intention of enabling wider adoption. Drawing on primary and secondary data, we explore the motivation for, and the attempted construction of, niches in three domains which are central to the adoption of innovative technologies: the regulatory, the health economic, and the clinical. We illustrate that these niches are collectively constructed via both formal and informal initiatives, and we argue that they reflect wider socio-political trends in the social management of biomedical novelty.

There is concern that translation 'from bench to bedside' within regenerative medicine (RM) will fail to materialize, or will be dismally slow, due to various challenges arising from the highly novel and disruptive nature of RM. In this article, we provide a summary of these challenges, and we critically engage with the notion that such challenges are specific to RM. It is important, we argue, not to overstate the exceptional nature of RM, as valuable lessons can be learned from elsewhere in medicine. Using several examples of technology adoption, we suggest that emerging RM products and procedures will have to work hard to find or create an adoption space if translation into the clinic is to be successful.