Elsevier

Technology in Society

Volume 66, August 2021, 101668
Technology in Society

Sociotechnical alignment in biomedicine: The 3D bioprinting market beyond technology convergence

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techsoc.2021.101668Get rights and content

Highlights

  • The concept of sociotechnical alignment is used to interpretive hybrid technologies.

  • Alignment has three dimensions: technology, social relations, and politics.

  • 3D bioprinting is a field with high degrees of sociotechnical alignment.

  • In bioprinting, alignment has been realized in different ways in different places.

  • The current diversity of the bioprinting market may be jeopardized in the future.

Abstract

The nature of hybrid technologies has been frequently interpreted with the concept of technology convergence. However, this concept tends to highlight only technical aspects of technology and market evolution. In order to provide a more comprehensive picture, the concept of sociotechnical alignment is explored here.

The field of 3D bioprinting (the production of biological structures with automated, computer-controlled bioprinters) is focused on here. In the emergent global bioprinting market, companies have relied on three core technologies (tissue engineering, additive manufacturing, and software development) and continue to receive inputs from other technologies.

On the biological side, bioprinting has benefited from new approaches such as the use of induced pluripotent stem cells. On the engineering side, it has been possible to use relatively cheap technologies such as open-source processing Arduino boards. On the software side, the proliferation of open source packages has strengthened the possibilities of bioprinting. The combination between these and other technology fringes involves a process of sociotechnical alignment whereby technical, scientific, and political issues are always at play.

As a result, different companies have been able to realize different market strategies, having varied geographical reach. However, the first movements towards extensive globalization can also be noticed. In this way, the current diversity of the bioprinting market may be jeopardized in the years to come.

Section snippets

Blending technologies

It is widely realized that the name “mobile phone” (or “cell phone”) is far from doing justice to what the device really is. It can be used as a calculator, an internet browser, a digital diary, a data storage device, among other applications which include, for sure, that of a telephone. This kind of combination of different technologies, which creates not only sophisticated machines but also thriving markets, has frequently been described with the concept of technology convergence. To be sure,

Research methods

This paper derives from the research project called Governing Biomodification in the Life Sciences (BioGov), conducted through a collaboration between researchers based in the Universities of Sussex, Oxford, and York. The project is aimed to identify and interpret the social and regulatory challenges posed by three cutting-edge biomedical technologies: 3D bioprinting, gene editing, and induced pluripotent stem cells. Ethics approval was obtained from the Central University Research Ethics

Market features

Analysts mobilizing the concept of technology convergence tend to emphasize the benefits of the phenomenon, the biggest of which is technology development, said to be quicker and more robust in converging technologies [36,37]. Furthermore, consumers are said to benefit from convergence insofar as new and improved products reach the market thanks to such convergence [2].

Due to these advantages and positive externalities, “[…] R&D managers and researchers have formulated their own strategies for

Sociotechnical alignment and its dimensions

To analyse how sociotechnical alignment manifests itself in the emerging global bioprinting market, technical and scientific aspects will be stressed. Such effort will conduct us towards the analysis of underlying socio-political processes.

Final considerations

Generally, authors speaking of technology convergence focus on the connections made possible when technologies come together. Alternatively, in the approach advanced here, it has been pointed out since the beginning that alignments are as important as misalignments that remain to be tackled in the future. In the usage proposed by Dilger and Mattes [50], it can be said that “flows” are as important as “particular disconnections, immobilities, and blockages of flows.”

One finding that needs to be

Funding

This work is supported by the Leverhulme Trust under the grant number 68387.

Declarations of competing interest

None.

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