Intellectual property rights, particularly patents, are considered by some as being a barrier in access to medicines despite being a stimulus for innovation. At a recent symposium co-organised by the World Health Organization, World Trade Organization and World Intellectual Property Organization, speakers also talked about the role of science, governments, and universities in health innovation and access, and how to address challenges such as secondary patents. Continue reading ->
The price of hepatitis C medicine marked a turning point in the discussion on access to medicines, with developed countries suddenly confronted to prices they could not afford. This week, a symposium jointly organised by the World Health Organization, the World Trade Organization, and the World Intellectual Property Organization explored the question of the pricing of medicines. A number of suggestions were made to alleviate the issue, such as ensuring wide use of generic medicines, encouraging competition, and alerting countries about the cost of medicine production so they negotiate better with pharmaceutical companies. Continue reading ->
How to encourage health innovations and make sure that new medicines, vaccines, or diagnostics will reach every person who needs them? That is a question which has been hotly debated in different fora. Yesterday, the World Trade Organization, UN World Health Organization, and UN World Intellectual Property Organization jointly held a symposium on how innovative technologies can promote the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The WHO director general called on his colleagues to support policies facilitating access to health technologies. Continue reading ->
The Wellcome Trust, the London-based biomedical research charity, has issued recommendations for improved scientific collaboration after Brexit, including to establish a formal agreement on research and innovation. This includes continued leadership by the UK on open research, and might include expanding the UK patent box scheme, it says. Continue reading ->
Some products are too cheap, generic drug companies do not invest in them because they do not make enough money out of them. Others seem astronomically expensive, and are said to include the costs of all research, successes and failures alike. Panellists at a recent Swiss-organised expert event in Bern concurred that something must done about pricing, and explored some surprising ways to do it. Continue reading ->
CARB-X , a global private-public partnership for research on antimicrobial resistance, this week announced its 2018 rounds of funding for research on "antibiotics, vaccines, diagnostics, devices and other life-saving products to respond to the threat of drug-resistant bacteria." Continue reading ->
The World Health Organization today announced a new high-level commission of heads of state, ministers and other leaders in health and development to come up with "bold and innovative solutions" against non-communicable diseases such as heart and respiratory diseases, cancers and diabetes. The chairs of the commission include the presidents of Uruguay, Sri Lanka, and Finland, the Russian health minister, and a former minister of Pakistan who was a candidate for director general of the WHO. They are joined by nearly two dozen others, including corporate public figures Michael Bloomberg and Jack Ma. Continue reading ->
The United States Chamber of Commerce industry group recently issued its annual global IP index, analysing intellectual property protection in 50 countries, as a prelude to the annual US government list of countries seen as not adequately protection US companies' IP rights. Now an Indian industry group has issued a counter-statement to the Chamber index, calling it a "tirade" and "self-serving". Continue reading ->
CARB-X, the private-public partnership for research on antimicrobial resistance, today announced its first award of 2018, nearly $2 million for the development of a new class of antibiotics. Meanwhile, the group has announced it is seeking to partner with accelerator organisations to build its pipeline of early development research projects. It also announced a study that called for a new global approach and greater financial incentives for antibiotic research. Continue reading ->
The current innovation system has yielded many important innovations and extended human life, nobody disputes this. But what about the cases where it hasn’t and a problem persists? A panel of health experts organised recently by the Swiss government and including representatives of the pharmaceutical industry, the World Health Organization, academia, and a research institution held an unusually open and positive discussion that sought to get underneath the issue. Continue reading ->