Daily Report Day 2 (Wednesday 18th November 2009)

Wednesday’s plenary session looked at the challenges associated with enhancing the national environment for innovation with an emphasis on perspectives from low- and middle-income countries. Leading off the session, Dr Chen Zhu, Minister of Health of the People’s Republic of China, provided an overview of the “Healthy China 2020” plan to reform the country’s health system. Key tasks for the short-term include the construction of a basic medical insurance system and the establishment of a national essential drugs list.

India faces equally staggering challenges as it strives to achieve universal health care coverage. Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw of Biocon discussed India’s innovation strengths, including a young, educated population, increasing investments in science and technology, and a vast, highly sophisticated IT industry, but recognized that its challenges are immense.

The only short-term solution to the chronic shortage of medical professionals in remote rural areas is to import them from urban areas using telemedicine technology, said Al Hammond, Senior Entrepreneur in Residence at Ashoka. As broadband coverage catches up with that of cell phones over the next five years, linking patients with doctors or pharmacists via video will be easy and affordable, however significant policy barriers remain. Read more in our blog on technological innovation for health distribution in rural areas.

Today, the TropIKA team attended several key sessions. One on global incentives for innovation looked at the push and pull incentives available to policymakers and donors. Some of the suggestions include a patent pool and R&D prizes. One of the speakers at the meeting was the organisation’s incumbent executive director Anthony Mbewu, previously at the Medical Research Council in South Africa. TropIKA interviewed Dr Mbewu – read our Q&A here

A session on climate change and health equity, chaired by Fiona Godlee, editor of the BMJ, looked at how to better integrate climate research with health research. It will be crucial for health to be high on the agenda in the climate change meeting in Copenhagen, for example.

Perhaps most important was a session on priority setting for health research. There perpetual lack of funds that developing countries suffer from means that identifying specific priorities will be vital. These are just the highlights, however, soon we will post in-depth session reports from our rapporteurs that put these issues into context.