Global technological transformations and asymmetries: Development strategy and structural challenges for the unified health system

Abstract

This paper articulates contemporary themes of the development agenda as global phenomena that affect the dissemination and direction of health technical progress, subjecting the sustainability of the Unified Health System (SUS). The evaluation of the external dependence of the Brazilian Health Economic Industrial Complex, the bibliographical review of the literature on economic complexity and its data on Latin America and Brazil and the collection and evaluation of statistical data from the World Intellectual Property Organization and the National Institute of Industrial Property enable us to build an overview of increasing economic and power asymmetries that reiteratesthis centre-periphery pattern in multiple themes and geographical scales. This perspective consolidates the endogenous link between national development patterns and structural possibilities and boundaries for the setting of a Brazilian universal health system. Confronting global technological asymmetries is part of a strategic agenda that conditionsthe advancingof the Unified Health Systemtowards its founding principles of universality, comprehensiveness and equity.