World IP Day – The shoulders of giants
26.04.20
Listening to Friday’s launch of the World Health Organisations ACT Accelerator initiative, many of the world leaders and key partners in the fight against COVID-19 underlined that our collective route out from under the cloud of this pandemic is through science and innovation. The development of vaccines and treatments is essential to solve this crisis. As an industry we are committed not only to finding these vaccines and treatments but also to ensuring that when new treatments and vaccines are approved, they will be available and affordable for citizens, patients and health systems.
Today is World IP day. And it is only because of intellectual property protection that we have over 30 treatments currently being explored for use against COVID-19. Creating a research eco-system means having the skills, networks, health-data infrastructure, regulatory flexibility and IP policies that support and foster medical innovation. It gives us the tools to tackle global health challenges. IP continues to play a key role both facilitating research by ensuring that the science behind patents is made publicly available and can be further researched and by driving the investment needed to maintain and develop that eco-system, here in Europe and across the world.
IP is the key driver of innovation to meet health challenges and that innovation is only meaningful if patients get access to it. That is why EFPIA member companies have committed to expanding our manufacturing capabilities and sharing available capacity to ramp up production once a successful medicine or vaccine is developed and then working with governments and health systems to ensure that when new treatments and vaccines are approved they are available and affordable.
On World IP day we want to pay tribute and give our thanks to all those scientists and researchers working day and night to find diagnostics, treatments and vaccines to help us all navigate out of this crisis. As IP is the driver of investment in medical innovation, our scientists and researchers are the giants on whose shoulders our hopes rest.
