| Popis: |
Global healthcare systems are united by their desire to widen patient access to safe and effective clinical services in the face of increasing demand and financial constraints. In low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), a variety of ingenious product and process solutions, termed frugal innovations, have been able to deliver services at a fraction of the cost. It is the broad proposition of this work that such ideas could be applicable to high-income countries (HICs), a concept labeled reverse innovation. Using a conceptual model of innovation scouting derived from the causal mechanism of critical realism, this work examined the development and testing of a tool to deductively identify frugal innovations in healthcare (FIH-ID tool) and then evaluated methodology to assess the reversibility of potential of frugal innovations. The FIH-ID tool demonstrated consistently acceptable inter-rater reliability scores using different methods of application and different raters, moreover, construct validity was shown by its ability to identify well-known frugal innovations. With respect to the assessment of the reversibility potential, the results of the present study highlighted the challenges of undertaking such a complex evaluation process using a simple scoring system. Raters achieved poor levels of inter-rater reliability and only 2 innovations were thought likely to reverse to a HIC. This study presents the first application of a critical realist approach to innovation scouting. It has identified a cohort of 76 potential frugal innovations in healthcare suggesting that the FIH-ID tool is likely to be a valuable asset for similar studies in the future. It has highlighted the challenges of assessing the reversibility potential of innovations from LMICs. It has documented the emergence of the global innovation curator, entities that seek to identify, curate and promote innovations from LMICs, and it proposes a conceptual model for the role of global innovation curators in the diffusion of innovation. |
