Network heterogeneity, scientific performance and medical innovation

In the context of biomedicine, research networks are expected to provide valuable resources to deliver both fundamental understanding about the root causes of diseases (i.e. scientific discoveries), and contributions to the development of new treatments and diagnostic methods to improve healthcare (i.e. technological advances). The main aim of this research is to identify the types of network configuration which are most conducive to the generation of two knowledge outcomes: scientific performance and medical innovations. Biomedical research networks have been rarely examined for their capacity to ‘jointly’ contribute to these two types of knowledge outcomes. This is relevant from policy and management perspectives, since biomedical research networks are increasingly scrutinized by their capacity to translate scientific knowledge into new technologies.