When using a novel surgical technique contributes to inequity, should it still count as "innovative"?

This article argues that evaluating surgical innovations' normative and scientific integrity requires that their merits must also be contextualized by their social, cultural, and environmental determinants. This article draws on examples of surgical innovations developed in the Global South that have or have not found their way to the lucrative health care marketplaces of the Global North. While interrogating what ought to count as "innovative," these examples will also act as a foundation for better understanding the asymmetric power dynamics at play in global health initiatives and how dismantling them will require returning credit and ownership to those who bore the risks of the innovation in the first place.