Building effective collaboration between health systems and the life sciences industry

ABSTRACT

This viewpoint reflects on the challenges of promoting affordable and innovative medicines while fostering a competitive environment for research and development in developing countries. We explore the life sciences industrial policies of Brazil and the United Kingdom in order to identify mechanisms and conditions that could serve as lessons to practitioners in other countries. We suggest three crucial design attributes: a strategic collaboration between a health system and the private sector, coordination and accountability mechanisms, and a network of support (that is, embeddedness).

KEYWORDS:

• Aid – Development policies, Capacity development
• Globalisation (inc trade, private sector)
• Governance and public policy
• Social sector – Health, Technology – ICT

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Prof. Kenneth Shadlen and Rafael Baptista Palazzi. Mariana Ramos Teixeira thanks the Department of International Development at the London School of Economics for hosting her during fieldwork in London.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Elize Massard da Fonseca is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Public Administration of the Sao Paulo Business School, Brazil and Visiting Scholar at the Center for Latin American Studies, University of California, Berkeley. Da Fonseca holds a PhD in Social Policy, University of Edinburgh (UK) and a PhD in Public Health, National School of Public Health (Brazil). Da Fonseca’s research focuses on the political economy of pharmaceutical regulation.

Mariana Ramos Teixeira is a Research Assistant at the Institute of Education and Research (INSPER), Brazil. Teixeira has a BA in Business. Her research interests are in development and gender studies.

Nilson do Rosario Costa is a Senior Researcher, Social Scientist, and former Chair of Graduate Studies in Public Health at the National School of Public Health, Fiocruz, Ministry of Health, Brazil. Costa has many years’ experience researching health economics and working with collaborators in Brazil and abroad (including the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank).

ORCID

Elize Massard da Fonseca http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3847-3105

Additional information

Funding

EMF and MRT receive funding from the Sao Paulo Research Foundation (Fapesp) under [grant numbers 2015/18604-5 and 2018/06997-0].