Engineering Meaning: Advancing Scaffold Design and Bioreactor Systems A Sociotechnical Analysis of Tissue Engineering Through the Lens of the Social Construction of Technology Framework
Year: 2025
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Tissue engineering represents a rapidly evolving frontier in biomedical research, offering transformative potential to address the global shortage of donor organs and improve regenerative medicine outcomes. However, despite significant advancements in scaffold design, 3D bioprinting, and bioreactor systems, the clinical adoption of tissue engineered products remains limited. This research investigates the question: How do social and institutional interpretations shape the development and clinical integration of tissue engineering technologies? To answer this question, the Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) framework is applied to analyze how various social groups: regulators, clinicians, patients, ethicists, and engineers, assign meaning to tissue engineered innovations. SCOT’s emphasis on interpretive flexibility, closure, and stabilization provides a lens to understand why promising technologies succeed in some contexts but stall in others. Through the analysis, the research expects to reveal that the primary barriers to tissue engineering adoption are not solely technical but sociotechnical, arising from regulatory ambiguity, ethical debates, and public mistrust. The findings will demonstrate that successful innovation requires alignment between technical achievements and negotiated social meanings that support institutional and public trust. This research contributes to the field of STS by illustrating how social theory can inform biomedical innovation strategies, promoting more equitable and ethically grounded technologies, For engineering, it underscores that integrating social inquiry into the design process is not an obstacle but a pathway to resilient, impactful, and widely accepted innovations.
Source: Libra
DOI: 10.18130/93bd-sj12
Author: Andre Guerra Fernandez
Institution: University of Virginia
Language: English
Subfield: Physiology
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W6888008592
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