Saúde, desenvolvimento e inovação

Abstract

Over the course of the last century, the role of innovation has been recognized as a driving force behind the advent of capitalism. Consequently, those policies aimed at promoting innovation, as well as knowledge-intensive sectors, have gained a prominent role within contemporary society. Schumpeter 1 declaredly influenced by the likes of Marx, Schmoller and Sombart, identified the crucial nature of innovation as a source of competitiveness, economic development and social transformation. Systematic studies that followed essentially focused on the scientific foundations of innovation and on its technological infrastructure, indicating certain paradoxes of innovation resulting from the systemic fragility of theoretical analysis in this area and of the indicators on which it is based 2 . During the late 1980s, these reflections led to the emergence of the National Innovation Systems' (NIS) approach, through the pioneering work of Freeman, Lundvall and Nelson.Despite the fact that the NIS theory originally recognized the central role of learning and knowledge 3 , Lundvall 2 points out that its transformation into a potential commodity, subjugated to the logic of international competitiveness, should be attributed to the dominant neoliberal strain of contemporary capitalism. This fact implies a growing subordination of knowledge to market demands, something that can be seen, for example, in successive attempts to extend intellectual property rights to beyond the point recommended for the promotion of socioeconomic progress.There is still some way to go in our understanding of the innovation dynamic in healthcare, either because of our as yet limited knowledge of determinants involved in producer-user interaction, and the historical, geographical and innovation characteristics of the service sectors, or, especially, because of the non-observance of issues relating to power and subsequent underestimation of conflicts. The incorporation of political elements into our understanding of the contradictions that are characteristic tothis field is, therefor, vitally important.Since healthcare articulates a range of different technologies, it exerts, while at the same time, absorbing an influence on the standard of knowledge that is generated and disseminated. The challenge is, therefore, to discover how one shoul consider and question the two senses invoked by the expression "healthcare and innovation": one that responds to the determinations of a competitive international insertion (market), and one in which the population's risks of becoming sock are social (part of a civilizing and democratizing process). Based on this, affirming healthcare as a common good, a right to life in modern societies and a vector for sustainable development.The web of intrigue that surrounds the interaction and competition between public and private interests only increases the complexity of formulating policies aimed at innovation in healthcare systems. The choice, adherence to and dissemination of certain technological trajectories between the...

Aportes da teoria crítica da tecnologia à análise da inovação nos serviços de saúde

“…The transformation of knowledge into a potential commodity 3 has repercussions on health, especially because the field mobilizes a series of technologies and both influences and is influenced by the dynamics of innovation determined by global knowledge chains 4 . In addition to the existing iniquities and those resulting from social determinants, innovations incorporated in health represent restricted values that concentrate research and development resources (R&D), directed only secondarily to health needs 5 .…”