Abstract:
The transfer of innovations from low and middle-income
countries (LMICs) to high-income countries (HICs) has
received little attention, leaving gaps in the understanding
of the process, its benefits and the factors influencing it.
This scoping review, part of a National Institutes of Health
(NIH) project and the focus for a 2022 NIH-sponsored
workshop on Global Health Reciprocal Innovation, sought
to identify publications describing health innovations
that were researched, developed and implemented in
LMICs and adapted to address similar health challenges
in HICs. A protocol was written a priori and registered on
Open Science Framework. Four databases were searched
for articles published in English from 2000 to 2022 and
described health innovations developed in LMICs and
were transferred to HICs. Using Covidence, two reviewers
initially screened the title and abstract and then the full
text; discrepancies were resolved through discussion.
Two reviewers collected the data from each article using
Covidence and Microsoft Excel; discrepancies were
resolved by a separate third reviewer. 7191 records were
retrieved and screened of which 12 studies were included.
Various frameworks and methodologies were employed
in these studies, with a particular emphasis on adaptation
and adoption of innovations. The review uncovered
different paradigms of LMIC to HIC innovation transfer and
exchange, including unidirectional transfers from LMICs to
HICs as well as bidirectional or multidirectional mutually
beneficial exchanges. The use of both qualitative and
quantitative data collection methods was common across
all the included articles. Facilitators for innovation transfers
included stakeholder engagement, relevance of local
context, simplicity, and sufficient funding, promotion and
branding. Barriers to transfers were mostly the opposite of
the facilitators. Our results highlighted the underexplored
field of LMIC to HIC innovation transfer and exchange and
lay the foundation for future research studies
