scholarly journals COVID-19, IP and access: Will the current system of medical innovation and access to medicines meet global expectations?

Author(s):  
Olga Gurgula ◽  
Wen H Lee

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the fundamental flaws in the current system of medical innovation and access to medicines, which require urgent attention from the global community. This is prompted by the experience of the past decades, which has proven that this system was ineffective in securing adequate access to medicines for all. The understanding of the deficiencies of the existing system is crucial today, as it may help to design effective approaches for improving access. This article will also consider mechanisms that may be implemented by governments for the protection of public health. These include short-term mechanisms, such as compulsory licensing and government use, as well as the long-term design of a new innovation model, including state-coordinated research of medicines and open innovation. The current system should be reconsidered to ensure the prompt development of COVID-19 therapy accessible to everyone and full preparedness for the pandemics of the future.

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dr. Kamlesh Kumar Shukla

FIIs are companies registered outside India. In the past four years there has been more than $41 trillion worth of FII funds invested in India. This has been one of the major reasons on the bull market witnessing unprecedented growth with the BSE Sensex rising 221% in absolute terms in this span. The present downfall of the market too is influenced as these FIIs are taking out some of their invested money. Though there is a lot of value in this market and fundamentally there is a lot of upside in it. For long-term value investors, there’s little because for worry but short term traders are adversely getting affected by the role of FIIs are playing at the present. Investors should not panic and should remain invested in sectors where underlying earnings growth has little to do with financial markets or global economy.


2021 ◽  
pp. 244-248
Author(s):  
Michael J. Rosenfeld

Gay rights and marriage equality have advanced so far in the U.S. in the past decade that it would be all too easy to assume that the struggle is over. The opponents of gay rights, however, remain powerful. Readers can take inspiration from how dramatically attitudes toward gay rights have liberalized in the past two decades and how transformative the liberalization of attitudes has been. We live in a world where political lies often seem to have the upper hand. It is worth remembering that despite the many short term advantages that lies can yield in politics, the truth has some long term advantages as well. The way the marriage equality movement prevailed should be a lesson to anyone who wants to make progressive social change.


Author(s):  
Isabel Ramos ◽  
José Fernandes

In the past year, knowledge and innovation management have acquired increasing relevance in organizations. In the last decade, open innovation strategy, and in particular, crowdsourcing innovation model has also gained increasing importance. This model is seen as a new innovation model, capable of accelerating the innovation process. Therefore, it is important to understand how organizations can best take advantage of this innovation model. This paper approaches in two ways for commercializing intellectual property: crowdsourcing innovation, and intellectual property marketplaces. Thus, with the intention of understanding the concepts and practices, the study started by collecting scientific articles through bibliographic data bases. The paper provides knowledge about concepts and practices underlying the ways for commercializing intellectual property. It also contributes with a proposal of architecture for an intellectual property marketplace, based on the analysis of practices about crowdsourcing innovation and intellectual property marketplaces. This architecture is still in a draft stage, but already includes helpful insights for organizations interested in applying the open innovation strategy.


2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dana P. Goldman ◽  
Darius N. Lakdawalla ◽  
James R. Baumgardner ◽  
Mark T. Linthicum

AbstractMedical innovation has generated significant gains in health over the past decades, but these advances have been accompanied by rapid growth in healthcare spending. Faced with a growing number of high-cost but high-impact innovations, some have argued to constrain prices for new therapies – especially through global caps on pharmaceutical spending and limits on prices for individual drugs. We show that applying this threshold to past innovations would have limited access to many highly valuable drugs such as statins and anti-retrovirals. We also argue that budget caps violate several important principles of health policy. First, budget caps treat healthcare spending as a consumption good, like going to a movie or buying a meal. However, healthcare spending should be viewed as an investment, whose benefits accrue over many years – much like spending on education. Second, budgetary cost is a poor indicator of value, thereby distorting coverage decisions. Third, affordability arguments often use a short-term horizon, thereby missing that long-term health is society’s ultimate goal. Fourth, assessments of benefit should incorporate not just the immediate clinical benefit to patients, but also long-term health improvements, cost savings, and increased productivity. Fifth, global budget caps arbitrarily anchor spending on the status quo, thereby setting too stringent a threshold for socially-desirable innovation. In sum, a solitary focus on short-term costs can be detrimental to population health in the long-run. When medical treatment decisions are properly viewed as investments, budget caps are not the answer; rather, we need to find mechanisms to encourage spending decisions based on long-term value. Only then can we generate health returns to societal investments, while also encouraging the new research and development necessary to extend the gains of recent decades.


Author(s):  
Paul D. Miller

Afghanistan has twice been thrust front and center of US national security concerns in the past half-century: first, during the Soviet-Afghan War, when Afghanistan served as a proxy for American efforts to combat Soviet influence; and second, as the frontline state and host for America’s global response to al-Qaida’s terrorist attacks of 2001. In both instances, American involvement swung from intensive investment and engagement to withdrawal and neglect. In both cases, American involvement reflected US concerns more than Afghan realities. And both episodes resulted in short-term successes for American security with long-term consequences for Afghanistan and its people. The signing of a strategic partnership agreement between the two countries in 2012 and a bilateral security agreement in 2013 created the possibility of a steadier and more forward-looking relationship—albeit one that the American and Afghan people may be less inclined to pursue as America’s longest war continues to grind on.


2020 ◽  
Vol 81 (6) ◽  
pp. 1099-1113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuan Zhang ◽  
Pingping Luo ◽  
Shuangfeng Zhao ◽  
Shuxin Kang ◽  
Pengbo Wang ◽  
...  

Abstract Accelerated eutrophication, which is harmful and difficult to repair, is one of the most obvious and pervasive water pollution problems in the world. In the past three decades, the management of eutrophication has undergone a transformation from simple directed algal killing, reducing endogenous nutrient concentration to multiple technologies for the restoration of lake ecosystems. This article describes the development and revolution of three remediation methods in application, namely physical, chemical, and biological methods, and it outlines their possible improvements and future directions. Physical and chemical methods have obvious and quick effects to purify water in the short term and are more suitable for small-scale lakes. However, these two methods cannot fundamentally solve the eutrophic water phenomenon due to costly and incomplete removal results. Without a sound treatment system, the chemical method easily produces secondary pollution and residues and is usually used for emergency situations. The biological method is cost-effective and sustainable, but needs a long-term period. A combination of these three management techniques can be used to synthesize short-term and long-term management strategies that control current cyanobacterial blooms and restore the ecosystem. In addition, the development and application of new technologies, such as big data and machine learning, are promising approaches.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nurshad Ali ◽  
Farjana Islam

The outbreak of COVID-19 has created a serious public health concern worldwide. Although, most of the regions around the globe have been affected by COVID-19 infections; some regions are more badly affected in terms of infections and fatality rates than others. The exact reasons for such variations are not clear yet. This review discussed the possible effects of air pollution on COVID-19 infections and mortality based on some recent evidence. The findings of most studies reviewed here demonstrate that both short-term and long-term exposure to air pollution especially PM2.5 and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) may contribute significantly to higher rates of COVID-19 infections and mortalities with a lesser extent also PM10. A significant correlation has been found between air pollution and COVID-19 infections and mortality in some countries in the world. The available data also indicate that exposure to air pollution may influence COVID-19 transmission. Moreover, exposure to air pollution may increase vulnerability and have harmful effects on the prognosis of patients affected by COVID-19 infections. Further research should be conducted considering some potential confounders such as age and pre-existing medical conditions along with exposure to NO2, PM2.5 and other air pollutants to confirm their detrimental effects on mortalities from COVID-19.


1982 ◽  
Vol 15 (02) ◽  
pp. 180-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph LaPalombara

Political scientists are only now, and dimly, beginning to recognize that something called “political risk analysis” (PRA) is very much in vogue in the corporate and banking communities of this country. Any attempt to assess this uncommon development should begin with this question: Why would any banker or corporate manager wish to spend hard cash on anything political scientists might have to say about places overseas where banks and multinational corporations lend or invest their capital? After all, the profession is not exactly distinguished by its ability to make accurate forecasts. Indeed, Sartori has argued that political scientists ought to eschew forecasting entirely in that they are best able to explain what happened as opposed to what may come to pass.Sartori's assertion of course would make historians of us all—and burden us with the historian's smug claim that, if the history examined is too recent, the immediacy of events will distort our vision and bias our judgments. Thus, rather than try to foretell where, say, Germany will move politically next year we should expend (more!) of our resources to establish once and for all what really caused Weimar to collapse and Hitler to come to power.This is not the stuff of political risk analysis. Growing interest in this activity is little based on broad analyses of the past or on long-term forecasts of future events. The potential consumers of political assessments are intelligent, harried bankers and corporate managers who are pressed to make relatively short-term decisions that affect the viability of enterprise and investment-and, equally important, careers-in professions where tenure is unknown.


2010 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fátima Martel ◽  
Rosário Monteiro ◽  
Conceição Calhau

Polyphenols are a group of widely distributed phytochemicals present in most foods of vegetable origin. A growing number of biological effects have been attributed to these molecules in the past few years and only recently has their interference with the transport capacity of epithelial barriers received attention. This review will present data obtained concerning the effect of polyphenols upon the transport of some compounds (organic cations, glucose and the vitamins thiamin and folic acid) at the intestinal and placental barriers. Important conclusions can be drawn: (i) different classes of polyphenols affect transport of these bioactive compounds at the intestinal epithelia and the placenta; (ii) different compounds belonging to the same phenolic family often possess opposite effects upon transport of a given molecule; (iii) the acute and chronic/short-term and long-term exposures to polyphenols do not produce parallel results and, therefore, care should be taken when extrapolating results; (iv) the effect of polyphenolics in combination may be very different from the expected ones taking into account the effect of each of these compounds alone, and so care should be taken when speculating on the effect of a drink based on the effect of one component only; (v) care should be taken in drawing conclusions for alcoholic beverages from results obtained with ethanol alone. Although most of the data reviewed in the present paper refer to in vitro experiments with cell-culture systems, these studies raise a concern about possible changes in the bioavailability of substrates upon concomitant ingestion of polyphenols.


2012 ◽  
Vol 62 (4) ◽  
pp. 423-434
Author(s):  
Jan Winiecki

A look at the Western debate about West’s problems reveals what the present writer regards in a large measure as an irritating superficiality. Nowhere is it better visible than in the mainstream discussions about the euro zone and its problems, where most debaters glide over the fundamentals of Europe’s long-term problems and concentrate on the superficial and short-term issues. The discussions on how to “save” the euro zone strangely forget the defects in its creation, glide over the lessons to be drawn from policies pursued during the past decade, and defend the virtue of maintaining its present membership. But the problems of Europe run much deeper than the survival or collapse of the monetary union. Even if we assume that the problems of confidence the member states have in each other’s behaviour are restored and the rest of the world regains confidence in the institutions of the monetary union, the fundamental problems will remain unsolved. A clue to the real long-term problems may be found in the answer to a rather simple question. It runs as follows: “Why is the large majority of European countries indebted to such an extent that any further increase in debt to GDP ratio generates panic reactions among potential lenders?”


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document