Prevention of COVID-19 pandemic through technological innovation: ensuring global innovative capability, absorptive capacity, and adaptive healthcare competency

Abstract

The study examines the role of technology transfer in preventing communicable diseases, including COVID-19, in a heterogeneous panel of selected 65 countries. The study employed robust least square regression and innovation accounting matrixes to get robust inferences. The results found that overall technological innovation, including innovative capability, absorptive capacity, and healthcare competency, helps reduce infectious diseases, including the COVID-19 pandemic. Patent applications, scientific and technical journal articles, trade openness, hospital beds, and physicians are the main factors supporting the reduction of infectious diseases, including the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to inadequate research and development, healthcare infrastructure expenditures have caused many communicable diseases. The increasing number of mobile phone subscribers and healthcare expenditures cannot minimize the coronavirus pandemic globally. The impulse response function shows an increasing number of patent applications, mobile penetration, and hospital beds that will likely decrease infectious diseases, including COVID-19. In contrast, insufficient resource spending would likely increase death rates from contagious diseases over a time horizon. It is high time to digitalize healthcare policies to control coronavirus worldwide.