Temporary geographical proximities and the health industrial complex: the role of healthcare trade shows and medical congresses on diffusion processes of knowledge and technology

• Grant number: 15/18483-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Master's degree
• Start date: October 09, 2015
• End date: January 08, 2016
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Geography - Human Geography
• Principal Investigator: Ricardo Mendes Antas Jr
• Grantee: Flavio de Campos Vendrusculo
• Supervisor: Harald Bathelt
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: University of Toronto (U of T), Canada
• Associated to the scholarship: 13/22370-4 - Medical trade fairs and congresses as cooperation circles in space: the integration of the Health Industrial Complex and the insertion of corporate logic in the hospital., BP.MS

Abstract

This research project was designed to guide further developments in the attempt of understanding the nature, extent, and structure of interaction and learning that takes place in healthcare trade shows and medical congresses. So far, the research has been conducted to understand how healthcare trade shows and medical congresses perform an important role of connecting a geographically dispersed supply and demand, putting in contact economic agents from different health industrial complexes (Gadelha, 2003). However conceptual and analytical gaps have been gradually discovered along the research process that points toward the need of providing a geographical interpretation of the knowledge circulation in the health industrial complex (HIC) through healthcare oriented trade shows and medical congresses. The problematic here exposed will focus on the role temporary clusters (Bathelt, Malmberg, Maskell, 2004) have by making knowledge circulate between the geographically scattered agents of different HICs in a national and international contexts. In this sense, further understanding how knowledge is created and how it circulates in these temporary face-to-face situations, helping firms and medicine specialists to overcome problems of information scarcity and uncertainty, will help us to expand our comprehension on how the globalization of the health industry depends on the creation of circles of cooperation (Santos, 1988, 1985) in national and international basis.