A Global Access Framework for Advancing Medicine (2012)

Undergraduates: Carolyn Treasure, none none none

Faculty Advisor: Margaret Bentley
Department: Economics

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Neglected diseases are becoming more prevalent globally; the WHO estimates more than one billion people—one-sixth of the world’s population—suffer from one or more neglected diseases.1 In consequence, translational research is becoming more imperative and under increased time constraints. Neglected disease research would be improved and the process expedited if several measures were taken to increase access to both health related innovations and information. In order to increase access to health related technologies, the NIH should establish a global access licensing framework for the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), which was created in order to promote research in neglected diseases. It needs equitable access licensing and public information sharing framework to accomplish its goals. Technology transfer should preserve further research by ensuring that intellectual property does not act as a barrier to further research. Thus, NCATS should facilitate future innovation by patenting its research products only when truly necessary to promote commercialization, utilizing non-exclusive licensing, creating streamlines processes for materials transfer, and reserving broad rights for the use of patented and licensed technology in future research. Secondly in order to increase access to information, the NIH needs to enforce their public access policy for diseases defined by the WHO and make all neglected disease related articles available to the public.