Health
What South Korea’s vaccine industry success teaches us about global trade policy
Jennifer Brant of the Innovation Council co-authored an article with Godfrey Firth for the World Economic Forum that uses the example of South Korea to show that tariff, trade facilitation and regulatory harmonisation measures can facilitate the global response to health crises such as COVID-19.
Capacity Building for Vaccine Manufacturing Across Developing Countries: The Way Forward
Innovation Council member Techinvention has published an article on capacity building for vaccine manufacturing. The authors of the paper show that challenges in the life cycle of vaccine production include process development, lead time, intellectual property, and local vaccine production. A robust and stable manufacturing process and constant raw material supplies over decades is critical. In a continuously evolving vaccine landscape, the need of the hour for developing nations is to manufacture their own vaccines besides having supply security, control over production scheduling and sustainability, control of costs, socio-economic development, and rapid response to local epidemics. There is a need for capacity building of workforce development, technology transfer, and financial support. Technology transfer has improved vaccine access and reduced prices of vaccines. Capacity building for the manufacturing of vaccines in developing countries has always been an area of paramount importance and more so in a pandemic situation.
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.
Revolutionising the education ecosystem with artificial intelligence
The pandemic broke our long-accepted beliefs that a good education can only happen in a physical classroom, with a teacher imparting lessons to all students. It underscored the importance of a new approach to learning. While virtual lessons were a crucial stop-gap solution, we need to recognise that this crisis has presented us with an opportunity to change the way we educate our children – that we can herald a new future of education with the help of innovative technologies like artificial intelligence (AI). With new technologies available, teaching can be done in a different, even more effective way.
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.
‘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.