Innovation stories

The Women in Innovation: Providing leadership, Creating Solutions and Driving Change webinar, held on International Women’s Day 2021, offered a glimpse into the different paths of resilience that women have taken. The impactful stories told at the event brought to light the challenges faced by women across the African continent, and offered innovative solutions that can be used to solve Africa’s problems and transform livelihoods.

Read through the quotes of the speakers here.

The 2021 edition of the Africa Young Innovators for Health Award focuses on supporting innovations that can make a difference to healthcare workers. This year’s Award program will be looking for and supporting innovative healthcare solutions aimed at supporting and equipping healthcare workers through solutions such as training programs, providing protective equipment or improving the quality of healthcare.

This Award provides mentorship, financial support, visibility and support with intellectual property protection of young African entrepreneurs’ healthcare innovation.

Applications close on 31 March 2021.

Apply now.

For many years, policy experts and others have engaged in wide-ranging debates about patents on pharmaceuticals, particularly in developing countries. On the one hand, it has been argued that IP protection provides crucial incentives to the pharmaceutical industry to undertake more research on tropical diseases. On the other hand, the patenting of pharmaceuticals has been criticised as causing challenges regarding access to medicines. The brief examines in detail the rationale for patenting medicines. The examination includes an investigation into the role of the patent system in relation to the pharmaceutical industry, the moral limits of patents, how the exclusion of a patent can create social costs, the rationale for the patenting of  medicines and the incentive theory and how this can be balanced with access to medicines.

Read the full story.

According to Silicon Valley Bank, total healthtech investment in 2020 was $15.3 billion, compared to just $10.6 billion in 2019. While healthcare deals were up across the board, a trend towards telehealth, virtual clinical trials, and other remote practices helped bring digital health to the forefront. However, many great ideas failed simply because they lacked access to knowledgeable insiders. And those experts that did exist tended to be monolithic or act as gatekeepers rather than sources of valuable guidance. Shelli Pavone founded Inlightened to help bridge that gap and break the hold of those gatekeepers. By creating a vast network of diverse healthcare experts for innovators to tap for guidance, she hopes to nudge more good ideas towards solving healthcare’s most compelling problems.

Read the full story.

The Innovation Council member Qualcomm launched the 5G Academy, a resource designed to educate the public and policymakers on 5G – from how it works to how it’s changing the way the world connects and communicates, and why standards and patents in wireless technology matter.

You can learn more why 5G will redefine the ways we connect to the world around us—making possible a connectivity fabric that weaves everything, and everyone, together.

Here’s a look at our future with 5G.

Test your knowledge on wireless technology – from wireless voice calls to autonomous cars? Test here your 5G knowledge by playing the 5G Game!

The health pandemic has shown the need for faster wireless networks to boost remote learning. Watch here how 5G can take e-learning to the next level.

5G networks will broaden the ways we interact with doctors, manage our own health, and improve access to treatment. Watch here how 5G will transform healthcare.

In this online pitch competition, three e-commerce companies from developing and least developed countries will pitch their story and will be asked a series of questions, with online participants deciding who wins.

In their pitch, finalists will have to provide practical e-commerce insights, actionable tips and innovative approaches. The aim is to share specific learnings, get inspired, and learn useful tips and tools to boost online sales. The winning e-commerce entrepreneur will receive a prize package worth 1,000 USD for digital marketing services.

The three companies are MYANiture from Myanmar, Booksie from Ghana, and Nanjala from Kenya.

As of November 2020, at least 44 manufacturing and production deals for COVID-19 therapeutics around the globe were made public. A number of these deals were intended to expand access to therapeutics to low and middle-income countries. In relation to all of them, licensing, enabled by a well well-functioning intellectual property system, has been a key enabler.

• Eli Lilly and Company and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, as part of the COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator, have entered into an agreement to facilitate access to future Lilly therapeutic antibodies under development for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19, to benefit low- and middle-income countries. Lilly’s collaborators have agreed to waive their royalties on the Lilly therapeutic antibodies distributed in low- and middle-income countries as part of this initiative.
• Gilead has entered into voluntary licensing agreements with nine generics manufacturers to further expand supply of remdesivir to 127 countries that represent nearly all low-income and lower-middle income countries. Gilead has completed technology transfers with these companies, and they are beginning the manufacturing process.
• Merck, IAVI, and Serum Institute of India are collaborating to develop a neutralizing monoclonal antibody treatment for COVID-19. If successful, Merck will lead commercialization in developed countries and the Serum Institute will lead global manufacturing as well as commercialization in low- and middle-low-income countries, including India.