Barriers and facilitators to technology transfer of NIDILRR grantees

Abstract

Purpose

The objectives of this mixed-methods study were to gather survey and interview data about the barriers and facilitators from grantees funded by the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR) and to extract themes that could inform program changes that would increase technology translation (TT) success in assistive technology (AT).

Materials and methods

We developed a TT Barriers and Facilitators survey consisting of Likert scale and multiple-choice questions about barriers and facilitators to TT. With survey respondents who were willing, we conducting a semi-structured interview and asked pointed questions to expand upon survey response rankings and perceived barriers and facilitators. The questions were framed to explore the grantee’s personal experience with ATTT and what helped and hindered their individualised processes.

Results

Across survey and interview respondents, the three most common themes when exploring the barriers and facilitators of TT were funding, incentives, and collaboration.

Conclusions

Results indicate that there is a need for increased collaboration and access to additional resources such as funding for pilot grants, support to assess technology marketability, help to navigate regulatory and legal aspects, and assistance in establishing goals to help grantees successfully transfer assistive technologies to consumers.

IMPLICATIONS FOR REHABILITATION

• A large amount of research and development into assistive technology does not lead to tech transfer which means that these technologies are not getting to the people that need them.

• Educating tech transfer offices at universities about how to transfer AT would improve outcomes greatly.

• Creating a community of practice where grantees can find academic or industry partners would also increase the likelihood of tech transfer.

• Some tools to catalyse these improvements are: mentoring, access to consultants, podcasts, and online training.

Keywords:

• Technology transfer
• barriers
• facilitators
• assistive technology
• commercialisation

Introduction

According to the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, 61 million adults in the United States live with a disability, equating to 26% or one in four adults [1]. Worldwide, an estimated one billion individuals need assistive technologies (ATs). This number is expected to increase to two billion by 2030 [2]. Without appropriate AT, individuals often are unable to fully participate in society and live active, independent lives. Therefore, it is increasingly important for resources to efficiently and effectively be used to provide access to AT for those who can benefit from them.

AT-focussed projects tend to have very high social impact but low economic impact [3] and related profit margins. Because of these relatively small profit margins, it is uncommon for companies to fund research and development that advances the field of AT to meet the growing need. It, therefore, is important for governments to invest in AT research and development activities that can lead to novel technologies to improve the lives of people with disabilities. Importantly, without federal funding to support the early-stage innovation, many of these impactful products would not exist [4]. A characteristic of federal funding is that it primarily provides support for early-stage design and development activities, and funding that supports commercialisation and production scale-up must be funded through other channels. An example of this funding structure is in the Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) program of federal agencies in the United States, which is a three-phase program, with funding supporting the first phase (proof of concept) and second phase (technical development), but not the third phase of commercialisation. Federal agencies expect that private-sector investment will support this third phase if the product has commercial promise. In practice, private-sector investments are rare in AT, and therefore, products often fail to be commercialised.

It follows, then, that while federal funding is critical to support AT innovation, it does not guarantee the success of the technology commercially or practically for the users. A practical example of this is the high abandonment rate of AT, which is often associated with poorly performing products. For example, of all ATs prescribed, 20–30% are eventually abandoned [5,6]. These statistics are indicative of devices that do not properly meet the needs of end users [7,8]. There also is strong evidence of a decreasing quality and reliability of AT over time [9–12] due, in part, to the reduced reimbursements for ATs and related services [10,11,13]. These issues highlight that there may be a poor product/market fit with AT which is defined as “the degree to which a product (or technology) satisfies a strong market demand” [14]. A technology has product/market fit when it (i) meets the needs of the customer-segments; (ii) has a value proposition over existing products; and (iii) can be sold at the required profit margin.

One of the ways to address the issues that lead to failed AT Technology Transfer (ATTT) is by investigating it through the lens of knowledge translation (KT). This process is defined as “the multidimensional, active process of ensuring that new knowledge and products gained through the course of research and development ultimately improve the lives of people with disabilities and further their participation in society” [15]. For KT to be successful, the new knowledge or product must address real issues which people with disabilities face, offer helpful information or solutions related to those issues, be presented in a way that makes it accessible to users, and be disseminated effectively.

The National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR) is committed to the use and adoption of its research and development efforts and has funded several KT centres to support grantees in achieving those outcomes [15]. Previous studies have looked at the barriers and facilitators NIDILRR grantees are facing and identified a lack of interdisciplinary collaboration and small market potential to be key barriers [16]. However, there is very little recent information available on what challenges NIDILRR grantees face during their ATTT activities, resulting in little actionable information to shape ATTT-related programs and technical support. This study is intended to fill this knowledge gap by gathering information on the barriers and facilitators faced during ATTT activities by NIDILLR grantees, as well as comparing current issues with those identified in the past [16]. In addition, we investigated the programmatic activities that could help improve ATTT that could be used to guide future efforts to increase the capacity and success of ATTT.

Methods

Study design

We conducted a mixed methods study to identify barriers and facilitators to TT among current and past NIDILRR grantees. We developed a TT Barriers and Facilitators survey consisting of Likert scale and multiple-choice questions (supplementary Table A2 in the appendix). The survey included a final question that inquired whether the respondent was willing to participate in a semi-structured interview to expand upon survey responses. The semi-structured interview (supplementary Table A3 in the appendix) included items on the purpose of the study, the grantee’s responses to the survey, and pointed questions to expand upon survey response rankings and perceived barriers and facilitators. The questions were framed to explore the grantee’s personal experience with ATTT and what helped and hindered their individualised processes. Interviews were scheduled to occur over Zoom and recorded for analysis.

Survey development

The TT Barriers and Facilitators survey was developed based on the foundation survey from the Centre on Knowledge Translation for Disability and Rehabilitation Research (KTDRR). This survey has been in circulation since 2013 and was originally developed by staff of the Research Utilisation Support and Help (RUSH) project, funded by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR, award H133A031402) to collect data on NIDRR grantees’ research utilisation activities of their NIDRR-funded projects.

The authors of this paper added additional TT questions to this survey in 2019 which ranged from barriers and facilitators to ATTT experience, type of grant awarded, factors in whether technology is successfully transferred, and activities that are helpful with ATTT assistance. Current NIDILRR grantees answered the TT questions included as part of the Centre on KTDRR Community of Practice (CoP) survey. Former NIDILRR grantees replied to the same questions by responding to a Qualtrics survey (supplementary Table A2 in the appendix).

Survey validation

In 2017, the Centre on KTDRR used the data collected since 2007 to conduct statistical validation analysis. KTDRR worked with a psychometrician from the American Institutes for Research who supports the centre’s evaluation activities. Internal consistency (i.e., reliability analysis) was examined using the Cronbach’s alpha analysis for the clusters of items. Some constructs did not have adequate reliability (generally recommended to be above .80), but others appear to be stable constructs (based on the reliability and frequency distribution analyses).

Factor analysis was not possible because most items did not correlate enough to create a cluster. In cases where the items did cluster, most clusters loaded under the same factor, indicating that these clusters were not measuring any variation of constructs. Instead, item level descriptive analysis was conducted to examine item-level missing data and frequency distribution of item response categories. It was recommended to delete the ‘neutral’ item from the response categories and to exclude items that consistently reported high levels of missing data. Another revision was part of an effort to reduce respondent burden and two open-ended questions were deleted that asked why PIs involved specific audiences in their work and what methods they used to do so.

From there, the authors of this paper ensured face validity of the additional 22 TT questions added to the CoP survey by having a panel of subject matter experts in the field of AT – specifically mobility, vision and hearing, rehabilitation and robotics, and AT end-users – review the questions and provide iterative feedback to ensure that the additional survey questions were appropriate for the data that was being collected.

Participants and recruitment

We recruited current and past NIDILRR grantees to collect data on a wide range of grant mechanisms and TT efforts. The grant mechanisms included: Disability and Rehabilitation Research Projects (DRRP), Rehabilitation Engineering Research Centre Programs (RERC), Field-Initiated Project Programs Rehabilitation Research (FIP), and Small Business Innovation Research Programs (SBIR). Additional information on funding mechanisms is provided by the National Rehabilitation Information Centre (NARIC) database and is summarised in Table 1.

Table 1. NIDILRR funding mechanisms.

Grant mechanism	Funding amount	Goals
Disability and Rehabilitation Research Projects (DRRP)	$200,000–$1,400,000	Supports knowledge translation, capacity building for minority research entities, individual research projects, and other work.
Rehabilitation Engineering Research Centre Program (RERC)	$500,000–$1,000,000	Supports advanced engineering research and development of innovative technologies to solve rehabilitation problems or remove environmental barriers for people with disabilities.
Field-Initiated Project Program Rehabilitation Research (FIP)	$100,000–$200,000	Supports investigator-initiated research projects that generate new knowledge and development projects that generate new products.
Small Business Innovation Research Program (SBIR)	Phase I – $25,000–$100,000 Phase II – $125,000–$575,000	Supports the development of new ideas and projects useful to people with disabilities through grants to small business firms with strong research capabilities.

The Centre on KTDRR and authors of this paper sent the survey by email to a total of 652 current and former NIDILRR grantees to participate in the survey and semi-structured interviews. The emails were received by KTDRR and shared as a part of their previous research into tech transfer from NIDILRR grants. Once committing to an interview, no respondents dropped out of the study.

Data collection

Surveys and interviews were conducted during the summer and fall of 2020. Post-survey interview questions, as seen in supplementary Table A3 in the appendix, were developed based on the survey questions to explore the perceived barriers and facilitators more deeply, as well as to inform the authors on what development and research activities would help grantees with their TT projects. A group of subject matter experts reviewed the interview questions for continuity and face validity.

The post-survey interviews were conducted by one primary researcher who asked questions to one grantee. Additional researchers observed and ensured all topics were addressed. The primary interviewer holds a PhD in Rehabilitation Science and is an expert in the AT field. He has extensive experience in TT, qualitative interviews and focus group methodology. The interviewer knew most of the interviewees professionally, but did not have a previously established relationship with anyone other than one participant from the same department at the interviewer’s university. It was disclosed that we were funded by NIDILRR to do this work. Because of the interviewer’s history as a NIDILRR grantee themselves, they might have had some biases or assumptions based on their own experience within the organisation’s granting structure. However, the interview protocol was followed and it attempted to avoid leading questions that might be a result of the interviewer’s biases. On average, the interviews lasted 50 min, ranging from 35 to 60 min. All interviews were recorded and transcribed using Zoom’s transcription services and loaded into NVivo 12 for analysis. The same researcher led all but one of the 15 interviews. In one case, an experienced moderator led the interview. Everyone who agreed to be interviewed was interviewed for this study. Future interviews will be completed until the study reaches saturation.

Data collection is currently on going and the research team is actively interviewing more grantees and increasing the diversity of grant types. The questions used can be generalised for more than just assistive technology translation or with non-NIDILRR grantees to demonstrate reproducibility of perceived barriers and facilitators. The collection of interviews will be on going until saturation has been reached.

Data analysis

The data was analysed using Grounded Theory. Data from the barriers and facilitators survey was aggregated and analysed using descriptive statistics in Excel and Qualtrics’ survey crosstab analysis tools. The one-on-one interview data was analysed using qualitative content analysis with an inductive approach, as well as thematic analysis [17]. The interviews were transcribed verbatim and uploaded to NVivo 12 to review transcription and code for perceived barriers and facilitators. Barriers and facilitators were coded as meaning units and described in a codebook. To minimise any potential bias, the transcripts were read and coded by two researchers, who both served as moderators during the interviews. One researcher was a master’s student within the rehabilitation science and technology department. The other was a full-time employee within the same department who also held a master’s degree. The units that mentioned barriers and facilitators to TT were abstracted and labelled with a code. Twenty different codes were used and are identified in the codebook shown in supplementary Table A4 of the appendix. These 20 coding categories were used to identify three key themes that addressed most of the topics brought up by the grantees. The codebooks were developed by the two researchers independently during open coding. They then compared their codebooks and together completed axial and selective coding to generate themes. This coding formed the basis for the themes combined with thematic analysis.

Results

Grantee characteristics

Twenty-one (21) current grantees and 39 former grantees responded to the survey questions through the KTDRR CoP survey and the authors’ survey distribution, respectively. Thirty percent (30%) of the email addresses that we had for previous grantees were no longer accurate and bounced. This led to a 13% response rate. All respondents who were willing to be interviewed were current grantees. Survey Data collected by the Centre on KTDRR was de-identified and provided to the research team, and the list of grantees who agreed to be interviewed was provided separately and not related to the data. Of the 60 total respondents, 24 indicated they would be willing to participate in a follow-up interview. Grantees represented a range of grant mechanisms and break down as: 45 RERCs, DRRPs, and FIPs, 13 SBIRs, and 2 did not report their grant types.

Grantees responded to multiple Likert scale questions regarding their perceived barriers and facilitators to TT. They ranked each item on a scale from 0 to 6, with 6 being very important and 0 being not important at all. Table 2 shows the median, range, and interquartile range of responses in each category as ranked by all 60 grantees. This figure shows those responses with most grantees ranking all of the options as reasonably important to TT. However, interdisciplinary collaboration and access to funding were the most consistently top ranked facilitators.

Table 2. NIDILRR grantee perceived facilitators to tech transfer.

Question	Min	Max	Average
Streamlining and improving efficiency	0	6	3.5
Interdisciplinary collaboration	2	6	4.9
Working with an experienced tech transfer office	0	6	3.6
University supports tech transfer	1	6	3.6
Access to funding	0	6	5.2
Access to technical assistance	0	6	4.2
Access to nearby technology companies who support prototyping development	0	6	3.6
Access to technology incubators	0	6	2.8

A similar Likert question set was used for barriers as seen in Table 3. The responses for barriers were more varied than for facilitators. These variations were discussed in depth in our interviews with the grantees. Overall, the most agreed upon issues from the barrier questions were lack of funding to translate technology out of universities and poorly defined and fragmented markets.

Table 3. NIDILRR grantee perceived barriers to tech transfer.

Question	Min	Max	Average
Poorly defined and fragmented markets	0	6	3.5
Lack of clear regulations	0	6	2.9
Lack of funding to translate technology out of universities	0	6	4.1
Lack of support from tech transfer office	0	6	2.8
Lack of understanding or clear process to transfer technology	0	6	2.9
Lack of adequate training to learn about technolog transfers	0	6	2.7

Of the 60 grantees who responded to the Barriers and Facilitators Survey, 24 (40%) agreed to be contacted for a one-on-one interview. The results from fifteen interviews are included in this manuscript, and more are planned in the future. The sample of grantees represents a diverse range of grant mechanisms. Seven SBIR grants, seven RERC grants, six FIP grants, and one DRRP grant were represented in the findings. Some grantees held multiple awards or award types.

Thematic analysis

We included interviews by all grant types in both academia and industry to allow for varying perspectives on the barriers and facilitators and allow enough interviews to extract themes that can inform program changes to increase technology translation success. We found three overarching themes from the interviews on the various aspects of TT for NIDLIR grantees. The first theme was related to the lack of support in the form of interdisciplinary collaborators and defining a champion to lead TT initiatives. The second theme focussed on a mismatch between the funding available and related timeline that is needed to successfully support TT for certain innovations. The final theme was related to the lack of incentives to transfer technologies out of the university setting. Any ellipses in quotations were inserted to eliminate any repetition in sentiment, remove unnecessary turns of phrase and pauses, or shorten the quote while ensuring not to change the meaning of the quote.

Theme 1: most grantees lack adequate support from interdisciplinary collaborators and must find champions within their organisation to lead TT initiatives

NIDILRR provides support to researchers in academia and industry. Though their perspectives were different, recipients from all grant mechanisms felt they did not always have the knowledge and resources needed to successfully transfer their technology. Every grantee brought up a specific issue related to the lack of resources in the university setting and industry settings. The most commonly discussed topic was the importance of having partners such as a mentor, university affiliation, or company guidance needed for an interdisciplinary approach. Some grantees talked about engaging commercial partners early to assist in the navigation of the customer discovery process.

One of the most frequently discussed topics was lack of knowledge related to the marketing and commercialisation process. Non-SBIR grantees specifically mentioned inadequate guidance for creating a business plan and conducting market research as barriers. On the other hand, SBIR grantees reported challenges with conducting trials that would provide the evidence for clinicians to recommend their products. Every grantee, therefore, stressed the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration. The individuals interviewed were all either in academia or industry exclusively, but all stressed that their most successful projects were when they found a partner from the other sector. If an industry partner was involved from the beginning, the academic partner would perform the research and the industry partner focussed on marketing and commercialisation tasks. The industry prospective included many quotes such as,

I think part of it is a mindset that knowing that our eventual goal will require a clinician to recommend what we are doing to their patient, that it is dependent on us to develop trust and it’s that’s a hard thing coming from an engineer without an MD or PhD next to my name. And so, because of that, we have found it important to work with universities and key opinion leaders at universities.

Moreover, the perspective from an academic setting was,

I think it makes a lot of sense to bring industry into the project right from the beginning with a monetary stake in it. And then let them do the selling.

Collaborations not only gave another perspective and approach to TT but also introduced a new set of skills. Multidisciplinary teams were very important to many projects. It is easier to be interdisciplinary in a university setting because most universities have a wide variety of experts on campus. Industry recipients, however, had to do a lot of cold calling and emailing to find collaborators with expertise that they were lacking.

While universities often have a TT office to assist researchers in their TT endeavour, including connecting with appropriate collaborators, TT offices at universities vary greatly– according to the grantees. Another notable theme was that most TT offices are concerned about the financial aspects of TT. AT often does not make a university very much money and, therefore, TT offices are perceived as unhelpful. Although TT offices were not mentioned as a barrier, most grantees from university settings shared the perspective that they were not helpful in the transfer assistive technology. An RERC grantee commented,

I think they are totally supportive. They are not putting barriers in the way. But I think they do not know how to help us…they ask us questions, and soon they discovered that we know more about the market than they do. You know, we know more about the distribution system than they do; we know more about…how we would contact the potential users than they do. We have a better feel for all parts of the marketplace.

Some TT offices have proven to be a great resource for grantees by connecting them with funding opportunities and appropriate mentors. However, it is dependent on the individual university practices, and grantees often are left to figure out TT without much assistance.

Another notable theme that came up in many interviews was that within academic institutions, a project will need a “champion” or someone to take ownership of the TT process in order to succeed. In addition to leading efforts to ensure the product makes it to market, this individual also must be aware of who owns what part of the technology, as that often dictates how the technology will advance to the market. An RERC grantee noted,

A lot of times it is a grad student who graduates who wants to start the company or, you know, work on the patent, and get things out there. Without someone pushing the project forward and being dedicated to seeing it through, often after doing the initial work, the projects would eventually fail. There were just not enough people, in some cases, to keep a project going.

Some grantees mentioned that they can identify support and champions through incubators, which are organisations that help to develop business ideas and launch new products or start-ups. Most grantees had a positive view of the incubators’ ability to connect them to mentors and a community. Some issues with incubators were noted, including from an SBIR grantee who commented,

In my experience incubators are really interested in hot, super, high risk super high reward where they want to see at least a 10 to one ROI [return on investment] on their dollars if not more. Even the submission process for an SBIR is longer than a lot of the incubated companies live. They will do something, test the market, fail, and go away. Now there’s other steps down the line…they would want a huge amount of equity to be part of their group at that super early stage.

Theme 2: there is a mismatch between funding available and the related timeline that is needed to successfully support TT for certain inventions

While the funding available to the grantees was adequate to support development, trials, or commercialisation, it is often not sufficient to support all three. Grantees stated that flexible additional funding would be helpful to use for pilot grants as the next steps in the commercialisation process. Most individuals stated that they would use pilot grant funding for focus groups or customer discovery. These specific extra funding use cases were brought up by experienced grantees who stated that developing hardware and software products have different timelines and expenses that inexperienced grantees might not expect. For example, software often has an unpredictable timeline, and that could not be effectively accounted for in a single project plan. It also has a large amount of post-development maintenance required to keep products functioning and up to date. One SBIR grantee stated,

If you create an app, it is not a one-time thing, you know, you have got to upgrade and update and every time the operating system changes, you got to retest it and if we are going to web apps you have now got to do this with all the different browsers and all the different hardware. You know, [developing software] may not be an iceberg. But sometimes, it certainly feels that way…all the programming that you must maintain is you know what is under the water…that is something I think every app developer today misses and certainly has been for decades…how big that iceberg really is.

While software products are developed rapidly in many cases, they have a large amount of work that grantees are not anticipating that might benefit from supplemental funding. Hardware products, on the other hand, provide a different set of funding issues. One grantee stated,

Because of the smaller amount that NIDILRR gives out, it makes it difficult to complete any project that requires physical hardware…Only getting one shot at doing a lot of the hardware means you don’t get the iterations where the projects we do with the NIH, we get to do an early prototype and early pilot and then even within a phase two, get some more feedback, make a correction, do it, change, and then have enough funding to actually implement that change before we launch.

Theme 3: there is a lack of incentives to transfer technology outside of a university

Every individual who was interviewed brought up issues with the marketing and commercialisation process of ATTT. Specifically, each person brought up customer discovery, regulatory, and commercialisation challenges. Because the markets for these projects are small, many grantees stated that it is hard to convince industry partners and TT offices that there is value in commercialising their products. One grantee noted,

I also find that in both institutions…they do not really care about my work because it is very clear they are not going to make a gazillion dollars. Yeah, and I get it, but what that means is there less response or less clear response, or they kind of just say do not worry about it.

Regardless of whether grantees are working with a TT office or an industry partner, the grantees found it challenging to translate their work due to the small market size. Business-oriented partners and collaborators struggled to see the value in the products due to this fact. Most grantees stressed that they were not developing products for financial gain, but that it was hard to garner support for product translation without a financial incentive. Some grantees also mentioned the university’s emphasis on patenting despite the notion that a patent does not equal commercial success.

Summary of recommendations

The grantees’ key recommendations on NIDILRR programs and processes included to shorten the application process, improve the TT plans, and offer grants to support the commercialisation process. SBIR recipients recommended to streamline the application process, which they found difficult due to their limited time and personnel. In particular, they suggested the use of a short application (e.g., a Letter of Intent) and a competitive screening process that can eliminate projects that have little chance of being funded easily. Once the number of initial applicants is reduced, a larger submission packet could be submitted. Many RERC grantees suggested changes to the format of TT plans. Grantees suggested that the TT plan be reframed as a roadmap for TT over the entire grant cycle. It was suggested that it should be used to identify key gaps that could be supported by outside partners, knowledge transfer advisors, and other mentors over time. The final suggestion that the grantees had was for smaller pilot funds to be made available. This modest amount of additional support would allow them to write much smaller proposals while they still had an active grant that would be used specifically for TT activities such as customer discovery.

Discussion

This work presents an early and emerging understanding of possible barriers and facilitators of ATTT of NIDILRR grantees. We identified three key themes from individual interviews with grantees on their personal experience with the TT process. We found similar themes emerge from grantees of all backgrounds, including RERC, FIP, DRRP, and SBIR, despite the varying funding levels and types of activities for each grant mechanism. Grantees recognised there is a disconnect between the resources they have such as time, personnel, software, mentors, and funding and the resources needed to complete successful TT for their AT product. Grantees talked about facilitators and tools that would make TT easier such as support to assess the marketability of their technology, help navigating regulatory and legal aspects of the process, and assistance in establishing the inventor’s goals depending on the person’s interest in commercialisation.

Based on the discussions with grantees, an important facilitator is connecting grantees with partners and mentors, an issue that was noted in previous studies, as well [16]. This type of facilitation could be in many forms, including identifying an individual who can champion a product as part of a start-up, or subject-matter experts at universities who will help run clinical trials. It is clear from the interviews that interdisciplinary collaboration and support is one of the most important facilitators to TT, and having a resource to help initiate and maintain these connections would be impactful for the grantees. This could be accomplished on a one-to-one basis where grantees are directly introduced to collaborators by a third party, but it could also be done on a larger scale. Some grantees brought up the possibility of receiving funding to attend conferences in hopes that they could find collaborators there. Currently, many grantees are emailing and making cold calls, but meeting face-to-face could provide a better initial interaction that could lead to long-term collaboration. A strategy such as developing a community of practice for NIDILRR grantees and through the CoP, to identify collaborators, is one of many possible strategies to address this issue.

Another subject that was brought up repeatedly was the need for training so that grantees become aware of what they should be doing to achieve TT. Many grantees brought up the National Science Foundation (NSF) Innovation Corps (I-Corps) training as a good example [18]. This suggestion indicates that this type of training could be beneficial for NIDILRR grantees, as well. The I-Corps training emphasises getting researchers out of their university laboratory to explore the commercial potential of their developed projects. Using this model for training programs could be useful for NIDILRR grantees. Meeting mentors and collaborators may also happen organically because of these programs.

For grantees who do not feel they have the time or resources to spend completing an entire program, more passive resources might be useful. For example, an online tool could be developed that allows grantees to search a network for possible collaborators or mentors. There also is value in having online resources that are just simple explanations describing good steps to achieve TT. Another passive learning technique for grantees is case studies. These would be stories of success and failure among past NIDILRR grantees so that current recipients could learn where grantees failed or succeeded and why. Some grantees suggested that these case studies could be useful in a podcast format so grantees could tell their story in their own words, and it would be easily digestible content.

Additional supplementary funding was mentioned several times throughout the interview process. Smaller grant funding has been identified as a possible facilitator in the past and implemented by other KT centres in the form of “PUSH” awards [19]. Moving forward, grantees could be made more aware of these supplementary funding opportunities through training programs. Funders could ensure that these awards are flexible enough that grantees in any phase of TT could apply for them successfully.

Limitations and future work

This study is limited by the low response rate of the survey, which led to a limited selection of grantees. There were representatives from each grant mechanism, but results may be skewed due to uneven representation and especially low representation of FIP grants. The results of this paper also are limited to NIDLRR grantees, so these findings and discussion may or may not apply directly to funding from other organisations or other fields of study.

Future research will continue to gather this information from a larger group of grantees, and longitudinally to understand the barriers and facilitators to each step in the TT process further.

Another limitation is the lack of diversity of stakeholders interviewed. We only interviewed NIDILRR grantees during this process and, therefore, it is not surprising that they stated that they needed more resources. In order to develop a full picture of the tech transfer ecosystem at NIDILRR, program officers or officials, people with disabilities who use these products, and technology transfer office workers should also be interviewed.

Our results and recommendations may lead to changes to existing programs and the launch of new programs. For instance, one of our recommendations was to develop a community of practice to help facilitate connections for grantees. This CoP could operate in conjunction with a training program, similar to I-Corps, to assist grantees in their TT goals. If these recommendations are implemented, future research could investigate the effectiveness of the intervention on ATTT.

Conclusions

Our results reveal the perceived barriers and facilitators of ATTT for current and past NIDILRR grantees. The greatest facilitators to TT for NIDILRR grantees are access to helpful TT offices and partnerships with interdisciplinary collaborators. Access to industry collaborators, hospitals, academic partners, and knowledgeable mentors also is needed to facilitate successful TT. The resources provided to grantees are valuable, and every aspect is utilised to get AT products to the consumers who need them, but there are not enough resources for grantees to market and commercialise AT products successfully. This research is evidence that more resources and collaborations are needed in the AT community to facilitate ATTT for current and future grants. Future projects should be committed to providing these valuable resources for NIDILRR grantees through offering training tools to help catalyse TT through mentoring, access to consultants, podcasts, and online training.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the Center on Knowledge Translation for Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR award 90DPKT001) for assistance with questionnaire development and participant recruitment, specifically Kathleen Murphy for all her contributions. Many thanks to the team at the University of Pittsburgh and the Qualitative, Evaluation and Stakeholder Engagement (Qual EASE) Research Services data center for assistance with qualitative thematic analysis and extracting participant data. This project was supported by the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research a Center within the Administration for Community Living (ACL), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). These results do not necessarily represent the policy of NIDILRR, ACL, or HHS, and you should not assume endorsement by the Federal Government.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by The National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research under grants # 90DPKT0002 and # 90DPKT0001.