WilliamsMemo5_theRestofit

Williams Memo 5 Project Definition __**Working Title: Knowledge and technology transfer of surgical technology-practice**__

__**Keywords:**__ in the following organizations in Nepal: and a possible comparative site in East Africa (Tanzania or Kenya) where the innovations focus on congenital cataract in infants As a comparative study still within the mantle of preventable blindness, it may be worthwhile to investigate glaucoma (the second highest cause of preventable blindness) which is fixed by (1)lowering preesure in the eye and (2) surgery called Trabeculectomy This disease is more common in industrialized nations than developing nations and might serve as a good contrast to show how the process of innovation changes between industrialized and devleoping national 'text' || __ Some sort of business/entrepreneurship theory?__ It takes 10-15 years to become "an overnight success". Dr. Ruit started working on SICS (a surgery type for cataracts) in the late 80's. Readers Digest names Dr. Sandak Ruit "Asian of the Year" in 2007 __**Innovation Examples**__ __**Knowledge Translation Examples**__ __**CURRENT**__ __**FUTURE**__ I'm not particularly interested in humanitarian projects that do not provide immediate and visibly recognized impacts in a community; this means that I may have difficulty identifying the "undone" work of these NGOs As an African-American I am interested in helping people of color. As a female I am interested in helping women and the WHO has published reports about how poverty dispropotionately affects women. As an example, women are twice as likely to develop cataracts than men. As a middle-class individual I am interested in universal public health care in the United States, but I do not know what that means and the complexity is daunting so I am going outside of the United States for a definition. This is bad because I am assuming that the 'other' is more 'simple' so I will have to be careful to show the complexity in the cases I study. || Assistant Professor of Policy at Virginia Tech Department of STS (Sustainability, World Development, Social Entrepreneurship, Appropriate Technology); Assistant Professor in the department of Science, Technology and Society, and the department of Systems and Information Engineering at the University of Virginia (Social Entrepreneurship, Organizational Theory, Risk & Uncertainty); Assistant Professor of Engineering Science at the University of Miami (alternative design, appropriate technology ); Assistant Professor of Sociology (Local Knowledges, Public Engagement, Community Science); Assistant Professor in the James Madison College, Sociology Department and Lecturer in the Mechanical Engineering Department at Michigan State University (SSK, knowledge translation, appropriate technology, alternative design); || # NSF STS Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant
 * 1) Social movements: epistemic cultures??, collective identity, transnationalism
 * 2) Sociology of Scientific Knowledge: ??!
 * 3) Social Construction of Technology: artifacts, organizations, large scale technology systems
 * 4) Collectives: !?!
 * 5) Organizational Theory: flexibility, resiliency, risk, uncertainty
 * 6) Expertise: local, situated, community, public
 * 7) Social entrepreneurship: microfinancing, ???
 * 8) World development: ??
 * 9) Appropriate technology: technology choice, technology-practice, alternative technology, intermediate technology
 * 10) Sustainability: ????
 * **Data Sets?** || **Why Now?** || **How Prepared?** || **Bias?** || **Fields of Work?** || **Funders?** ||
 * Participant Observation and Interviews of people:
 * 1) medical (physicians/surgeons, staff)
 * 2) non-medical (administrators, patients, government officials, supporters, philanthropists)
 * 3) manufacturing (engineers, designers, fabricators)
 * 1) John A. Moran Eye Center (University of Utah, USA)
 * 2) Tilganga Eye Centre
 * 3) Himalayan Cataract Project
 * 4) Fred Hollows Intraocular Laboratory
 * 1) inexpensive plastic lenses optimized to the average Nepali eye anatomy
 * 2) a rugged ophthalmic laser that can be used in eye clinics in the mountains
 * 3) and a new form of eye surgery, small incision cataract surgery (SICS) that requires more skill on the part of the surgeon, and less suture material
 * 1) Starting in the late 90's and early 00's there have been a lot of publications in European and USA medical journals from his research/surgical group.
 * 2) Also the Tilganga Eye Centre has performed 181 Outreach Microsurgical Eye Clinics from 1994-2006 in several South Asian countries and HCP helped several thousand people in Uganda In summer of 2008 || __ PAST__
 * 3) Case study on Nepal/Nigeria cataract surgeries (2008)
 * 4) Superficial literature review of discussions of technology transfer (ST Global grad. Conference paper)
 * 5) Superficial literature review of 3rd world innovative medical technologies (ST Global grad. Conference paper)
 * 1) Currently taking Eglash's "Knowledge Worlds" ; Fortun's "Research Methods"; Breyman's "Policy Studies" courses
 * 1) Re-read: knowledge inscription and Actor Network Theory (Latour)
 * 2) Read: Sociology of Scientific Knowledge (Bloor), Knowledge translation (???), Local Knowledges, Public Engagement, Community Science
 * 3) Re-read Social Movements: collectives (????), epistemic cultures ( I don't know if this concept works ), collective identity (Melucci 1996), transnational activism (Tarrow 1998&2005), transnational activist networks (Keck and Skikink 1999)
 * 4) Read Organizational theory: flexibility (???), resilience (???), risk (???), uncertainty (???)
 * 5) Read/re-read Design Theory: design of public and private spaces (???), participatory design (???) , material artifacts and large socio-technical systems (Bijker, Hughes, and Pinch, ed. 1987).
 * 6) Develop a comprehensive literature review of: world development, medical technology design, medical technology diffusion, and medical technology-practice from the perspective of social construction of technology theorists and policy analysts
 * 7) Possible methods courses: RPI's Ethnography and Cultural Analysis and SUNY's Survey Design and Analysis || From my work on my case study paper, I believe that this knowledge transfer is not just one-way 1st World/3rd World, but instead is circular, where the second half of the circle (3rd World/1st World) is not acknowledged. Again, since I already have this 'theory' it might be hard to 'see' what the empirical data is trying to say
 * 1) National Institutes of Health (NIH) Fogerty International Center (FIC) Research Grant
 * 2) Social Science Research Council (SSRC) International Dissertation Research Fellowships
 * 3) National Security Education Program Boren Fellowship for international study ||