Access to Inclusive and Innovative Technologies for Disability Management: The Role of Health Insurance and Reimbursement Policies

From telemedicine to welfare technology, the rise in digitally-driven innovations is transforming traditional roles in the health industry and enabling new approaches to wicked problems in healthcare specifically and in society on a broader level. For disability management, these new technologies are providing new avenues for inclusion and empowerment for people with disabilities from easing participation in the workforce to providing complementary or innovative forms of rehabilitation and/or coping strategies. At the same time, many of technologies are developed by initiatives addressing specific needs identified in local areas or action – broader access to technologies or innovative approaches may be hampered by varying reimbursement schemes and formal market boundaries, such as medical technology regulations. We examine the role health insurance and reimbursement policies play across markets in transferability and accessibility to inclusive and innovative technologies for disability management.