Health products industry and the loci of its scientific and technological skills

Abstract

The health products industry is capital and innovation intensive and needs a favorable institutional and business environment to develop, as well as scientific and technological skills, which are often not available. The objective of the article is to identify the loci of scientific and technological competences in the medical, hospital, dental and diagnostic equipment and materials sector in Brazil and to discuss, based on the literature, how the development of three productive agglomerations took place in this sector. The innovation system approach and its derived concepts were adopted: local productive arrangements and university-company relationship. The results obtained point out that, in the case of the analysis of scientific and technological competences, there is an agglomeration of research groups and companies in the Southeast and South regions of the country. With regard to the APLs, the results indicate that the articulation was proposed by the companies, although there was already interaction between companies and institutions even before the formation of the APLs, and that these APLs involved more than 20 institutions and companies. The results obtained also emphasize the importance of interaction between companies and research institutions located in the same region to encourage the growth of the industry and the generation of innovations for the market. Thus, it is concluded that there is still much to develop in this sector in Brazil.

Keywords: APL. EMHO. Campo Mourão. Pelotas. Ribeirão Preto.