A report launched this week by Health Action International and Salud por Derecho addresses the main issues affecting the public and non-exclusive licensing of health technologies developed using public funding.

Public support for biomedical research & development is critical for scientific progress and instrumental in allowing innovative health technologies to reach markets and patients. This support, economic or in-kind, is often decisive in the early stages of research for health technologies, such as vaccines or CAR- T therapies, which are then marketed by companies for extortionate prices, generating huge profits. Ensuring the public return on public investment remains a major challenge for funders and public research institutions.

Licensing and Access to Health Technologies: overcoming the obstacles to public return on public investment in R&D looks not only at legal and administrative hurdles to access, such as intellectual property rights, but also at the internal policy dilemmas faced by professionals and institutions.

On Monday 21 November, we gathered a group of experts for a webinar to identify and discuss the barriers to non-exclusive licensing and other forms of public return on public investment by public research organisations and their impact on access to health technologies. In doing so, our panel, which included representatives from the Global Health Centre and the People’s Vaccine Alliance, also looked at the current pandemic context, ongoing discussions in international organisations, and future health emergencies.

Watch a recording of the webinar, below.