State of the Science in Technology Transfer At the Confluence of Academic Research and Business Development – Merging Technology Transfer with Knowledge Translation to Deliver Value

The practice of technology transfer continues to evolve into a discipline. Efforts continue in the field of assistive technology (AT) to move technology-related prototypes, resulting from development in the academic sector, to product commercialization within the business sector. The article describes how technology transfer can be linked to knowledge translation. The results will increase the relevance of technology-oriented knowledge from upstream academic research to downstream development and production that involve both academic and business sectors. The linkage will provide the government sector with evidence with which stakeholders can apply research knowledge outputs to accomplish outcomes that achieve beneficial impacts for target populations of persons with disabilities. The resulting models, methods, and measures will also be useful to other fields of application.