The NHS is experiencing a massive amount of technological change. In all areas of healthcare, pharmaceutical, diagnostic, therapeutic and informatics technologies are being developed that have potential to improve the efficiency and the effectiveness of the NHS. Indeed, actual improvement of NHS services is dependent on the extent to which new technologies can be adopted successfully. It is the case, however, that adoption of this new technology will inevitably lead to the need for organisational change, re-design of NHS processes and the re-definition of staff roles but unfortunately technologies are not neutral black boxes that work irrespective of the social context into which they are introduced. There has to be a fit between the social context and the technology. The people in an organisation must not only accept the technology but also be willing to change their own patterns of working.This research is concerned with whether technologies developed within the NHS have inherently different adoption characteristics compared with technologies developed outside the NHS. It is asking whether the fact a technology was developed by NHS staff, in an NHS context, makes it more or less likely to be adopted successfully in other parts of the NHS.After an initial survey of NHS developed technologies, six internally-developed technologies will be identified for further research and compared with six comparable technologies developed outside the NHS. A total of 12 case sites will be investigated, six using the internally-developed technologies and six using externally-developed. Detailed case studies will be prepared that look at adoption policy and processes.These will then be used to develop an understanding of how a technology's origin impacts on its adoption