Sectoral collaboration networks for cardiovascular medical device development in South Africa

We present an analysis of sectoral collaboration for cardiovascular medical device development in South Africa over a 15 year period. The main objectives were to identify the nodes (organizations) and sectors that influence the behaviour of the cardiovascular device development network; to identify the types of collaboration that exist within the network; to quantify the extent of collaboration within the network; and finally to analyse the changes in overall collaboration over time. Collaboration across four sectors was considered: healthcare services, industry, universities, and lastly, science councils and facilities. Author affiliations, extracted from journal articles, were used to generate collaboration networks. Network metrics-degree centrality, betweenness centrality and graph densities-and network graphs were produced using network visualization software (UCINET) in order to identify the influential nodes and sectors, as well as to measure the extent of collaboration within and between sectors. The university and healthcare services sectors were found to make the largest contribution to the development of cardiovascular medical devices in South Africa. Collaboration between universities and healthcare service nodes was the most prevalent type of cross-sector collaboration. Universities were found to be potential key players in the transmission of information across the network, with greater potential than the remaining sectors to form new collaborations with isolated nodes, thereby enhancing device development activity. Foreign nodes played a role in connecting local nodes which would otherwise have been isolated. Overall, collaboration across sectors has increased over the 15 year period, but science councils and industry still have room to become more involved by partnering with the dominant sectors.