I took the title of this post from an Economist article about how the granting of patents is limiting access to essential medication for poor people.
It’s a well-worn topic.
But in the Pharma world we understand, a patent is our insurance policy against the value we create by innovating and investing in R&D to develop new drugs.
This is what enables us to ring-fence the returns on our investment and keep what my A-level economics teacher Mrs Parkin (yes that really was her name and she was a straight-talking Yorkshirewoman) said creates “Super-Normal Profits”.
This is the reason we stay in business. The Block-Busters.
The arguments against allowing patent restrictions to be waived are well-rehearsed and because they can be geographically limited the drugs companies can justify it in terms of Customer Service Representation (CSR).
A small round-one triumph to the lobbyists.
This undermines the big Pharma business model.
Differential pricing creates market distortions, encourages piracy and smuggling and surely can’t be good for long-term shareholder returns.
The Collaborative Model
The same article announced collaborations and sharing of patent portfolios and research between Pfizer and GSK for HIV drugs “in the hope of accelerating drug development”.
Now how does this align with patents as the insurance policy for our ROI?
Hopefully we can trust another big company whose business is similar to our own by putting our scientists into labs that can be ring-fenced so that we collaborate and share but it’s inside a “walled garden” on terms we both agree.
Sounds logical.
The Open Source Model
But is big Pharma missing the biggest trick in the book?
The software industry has long enabled ‘open source’ software creation and collaboration.
This free, shared collaboration has created one of the most robust computer operating systems, Linux, as well as OpenOffice (a MS mimic product), Firefox (browser), Wordpress (blogging), Joomla (CMS) and Sugar (CRM).
Applications exist in many software categories - mobile applications are rapidly catching on.
Open source is an approach to design, development and distribution for software.
Could it also work for the Pharma industry?
The wide range of diversity that it encourages through myriad development pathways and divergent communications across the whole community of interest is one of its greatest strengths.
Yet when we develop in isolation, are we are cutting ourselves off from a potential source of improved innovation?
Biotechnology claims to use the open source principles laid down by the software community for its development. Anyone got examples of this in practice?
One possible route for Pharma is through a new organisation “The Global Initiative for Open Innovation” – a collaboration between Cambia and the Queensland University of Technology
Funded by the Gates Foundation, it aims to combine open-access software and search to make drugs patents accessible to researchers.
Openness to promote equity and social outcomes?
Sadly only enabled by charity and non-profit/educational organisations. But someone has to be the first.
How does Thinking Parma feel about these two paradigms?
The Thinking Pharma Model
You’ll have noticed that all Jock McNeish’s wonderful cartoons that adorn our published work carry copyright statements.
I hope he sells some of the original artwork and gains new admirers of his work in the same way that Hugh McLeod did.
Hugh copyrights his work but encourages its free republishing and distribution on blogs.
Thinking Pharma uses an open-source Creative Commons licensing model.
You don’t have to allow everybody access to everything free of charge.
Thinking Pharma uses a mutual ‘share alike’ license so that anyone using and reproducing our work links back to our site in acknowledgement.
What do you think Pharma? Patent or Open-source?
For many the decision is already made. Join us.
(Tomorrow’s Post: Pharma Social Media - Testing, Experimentation and Platform Building)
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