Rethinking Mission-Oriented Technology Policies: a Critical Analysis of their Approaches to Health Industries
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15691/07194714.2025.005Keywords:
Mission-oriented policies, Innovation, Health industries, Health Economic-Industrial ComplexAbstract
Recently, Mission-Oriented Policies (MOPs) have regained public prominence, having peaked during the post-World War II era. Today, they are being promoted as a response to the search for technological solutions to major social challenges, many of which are related to the health sector. Despite their place in the debate on industrial policies, few approaches to MOPs have engaged with the field of international health. This work aims to contribute to filling that gap by providing a critical analysis of MOPs, considering two aspects that address the link between these policies and the socioeconomic determinants of health: their relationship with capitalism and with the core-periphery divide. From the connection between missions and health, two broad versions of MOPs emerge, which we term transformative and welfare-oriented, respectively. It is argued that combining transformative MOPs with more systemic and holistic approaches (e.g., the Health Economic-Industrial Complex framework) could serve as a tool to promote relevant structural changes in the health dynamics of peripheral countries.
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