Innovation and the Sustainable Development Goals
Innovators have a critical role to play in achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. They help to adapt and more broadly distribute existing products. They mobilize capital and investments for scaling proven solutions – and to develop entirely new ones. They apply and share their technology and know-how every day with partners globally. Companies in particular have the resources and scale to deliver broad global impact. Innovative partnerships involving the private sector are giving rise to creative ways of tackling global challenges in cost-effective, sustainable ways. Our members contribute to the SDGs through both their everyday activities and targeted initiatives. Through Innovation Council, they share information about what has worked, what worked less well, and their successes. They support diverse stakeholders in overcoming the remaining challenges to meet the SDG targets.
Gender and IP Literature
Innovation Council has created a running list of resources on various issues related to Gender and IP, based on work by Morgan Schreur
Slideshow: Measuring the Gender Gap in Innovation
Monitoring the share of women inventing, creating, and innovating is essential to develop appropriate policy responses to the innovation-related gender participation gap. Yet, several national and international innovation and IP data sources lack any type of gender breakdown.
This slideshow reviews the different ways to get innovation and IP data with gender breakdown.
Slideshow: Extending Bio-manufacturing Networks in Africa and IP and Covid
This slideshow presents key messages from the recent Innovation Council – Bobab online discussion about extending bio-manufacturing networks in emerging regions, notably Africa. The discussion on February 8th featured Prof. Mark Schultz of the University of Akron School of Law, Anissa Boumlic of Merck Life Science, and Simon Agwale of the African Vaccine Manufacturing Initiative. Click here for the video of the event, and click here to review a transcript of the event.
Quantum Computing takes off: A look at the evolution of Quantum Technology and Patents
In 1980, the idea of a quantum processing unit was proposed. Such a processing unit doesn’t use the 1s and 0s with which we’re familiar. That “classical” way of thinking is the way we think, with a 1 for true and a 0 for false, and combinations—for example, a “false positive.” Quantum computing is based on a “superposition” of states called “quantum bits” or “qubits” for short. But there’s a big difference between the way we think and the way nature behaves.
Webinar on BioManufacturing: Expanding Production Capacity in Emerging Regions
The Innovation Council and Bobab organised a discussion on expanding BioManufacturing production capacity in emerging regions. Biologics, a category of pharmaceuticals which includes products such as vaccines and monoclonal antibody treatments, are quickly becoming among the most important medical products in the world. By combining enabling government policies and technology transfer between innovators and their global partners, it will be possible to improve availability of biologics, increase health security, and enhance scientific and industrial capacity in developing countries.
Information about speaker Anissa Boumlic is available here.
Information about speaker Mark Schultz is available here.
Information about speaker Simon Agwale is available here.
Information about AVMI is available here.
For more information on this discussion, click here to see the transcript.
Americans don’t have equal access to mental healthcare but technology is making it more democratic
One of the oldest, yet still unresolved issues plaguing the US health system is the unequal distribution of healthcare. This past August, a new study by JAMA revealed the ongoing disparity in healthcare spending by race. In particular, mental healthcare remains highly inaccessible across the board, but particularly for certain groups. Patients are screened for mental health in less than 5% of primary care visits, and Black people are half as likely to be examined than white people. And the elderly are also half as likely to be screened than middle-aged patients. However, novel health technologies are allowing us to move into a new era of equality and improved access to healthcare for everyone, eliminating the barriers between people and healthcare, by putting the patient at the center of care versus the provider.
US 5G Wireless Growth Opportunities in Healthcare
5G will accommodate dramatically more devices, media, and users. This will especially impact the Internet of Things, which will result in a huge increase in the amount of remote monitors and sensors that will allow patients to be tracked while on the go. The new level of patient-generated healthcare data will permit enhanced analysis of various conditions and diseases, which will support personalized medicine and improved outcomes. 5G technology will also enable wireless carriers to offer providers and payers new ways to manage spectrum. This will permit the development of wireless private networks that are able to support a healthcare enterprise’s evolving IT needs.
5G rollouts offer ‘internet of things’ a more sophisticated outlook
The “internet of things” (IoT) is often used as a catch-all phrase to describe the disparate items that use sensors to gather data — from driverless cars, to “smart cows”, to connected refrigerators, to robotic factories.But with the broader adoption of IoT technology into data-intensive tasks, such as remote monitoring, diagnostics and healthcare, demand for 5G networks is similarly increasing. The growing prevalence of 5G, which offers more speed, control, and security than older networks, has enabled a more sophisticated world of IoT technology to emerge.
Top Internet of Things (IoT) Trends for 2022: The Future of IoT
The growing Internet of Things (IoT) is connecting devices to a variety of sensors, applications, and other IoT elements to automate business processes and support human efficiencies in business and the home. IoT continues to change as engineers and companies discover new use cases and develop the infrastructure necessary to support more IoT networks. Read on to learn about some of the top Internet of Things trends of today and how they’ll impact the course of development in this field.
‘To be a scientist is a joy’: How a Hungarian biochemist helped revolutionize mRNA
Scientists generally don’t seek the limelight, but Dr. Katalin Kariko has been thrust right into it. The once obscure biochemist is now on the covers of magazines and newspapers because of her role in developing mRNA vaccine technology. An idea she started working on in the 1990s when no one thought it would work. She grew up daughter to a butcher, in a poor town near Budapest, where she lived in one room with her family for the first 10 years of her life. During this time, she also learned the skills for success there: determination, hard work and a positive attitude.
Australia’s medical innovation approach: Is it suitable for regenerative medicine?
Existing medical innovation pipelines have emerged to support the development of more conventional therapies and are often poorly suited to regenerative medicine. In recognition of this, a number of jurisdictions, including Japan, the UK, Canada and various U.S. states have launched state-level, system-wide strategies aimed at improving their ‘readiness’ for developing and implementing regenerative medicine. This includes the establishment of new funding mechanisms, facilitative regulatory frameworks, and initiatives to support academic networks and academic-industry-healthcare collaborations. All of these are aimed at accelerating innovation. Australia’s approach to its medical future is notably different. Despite asserting a commitment to invest heavily in medical innovation for the purpose of future health and prosperity, RM has not been identified as a specific national-level strategic priority. Australia thus provides an interesting and contrasting case study for how system-wide readiness for RM may be achieved ‘by other means’.
What it would mean for big Pharma if Vaccine IP Rights are waived
With COVID-19 vaccination rollouts in low-income countries still lagging far behind those in rich ones, a group of nations continues to push its proposal at the World Trade Organization to lift intellectual property protections for makers of the vaccines. Supporters of the waiver say the spread of the latest coronavirus variant, omicron, brings greater urgency to the need to speed production of vaccines in the developing world. Vaccine makers and other critics of the waiver say it undermines the incentives that led to the rapid development of the vaccines and wouldn’t have any practical effect.