Looking over the AUTM website, I came across the announcement for AUTM’s New Global Health Initiative. I think this is a superb initiative to translate AUTM’s potential into tangible progress towards realizing a Better World and serves to remind me of how I came into this wonderful field to make a larger impact for a better world than I otherwise could. This got be thinking that perhaps organizations like AUTM should consider working in concert with Multilateral Global Institutions such as the World Bank in seeking to further the goals of the Global Health Initiative.
Towards the end of the previous decade, the United Nations in partnership with other organizations such as the IMF and the World Bank defined eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) (http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/) that they aspire to achieve by 2015. In this regard, the World Bank and IMF have made it a priority to fund any and all projects that will help with the realization of these goals. Three of the eight MDGs are related to health care (Child Health, Maternal Health and combating HIV/AIDS). I believe that these MDGs create an opportunity for AUTM to help developing countries establish an indigenous capacity for licensing technologies whereby they can utilize the capital available from the World Bank and the IMF to negotiate licenses with competitive financial terms rather than depending on corporate largesse. Such negotiations will motivate the potential Licensee not only to provide material but also effect a transfer of technology which in turn would mean creation of jobs and a culture of enterprise and commerce which, taken together, provide the best route to defeat the vicious circle of poverty, malnutrition and disease (as the emerging economies of China, India and Vietnam have demonstrated). It is interesting to note that the World Bank provides assistance to countries in setting up their own Intellectual Property regimes under its Market Services Development (MSD) program. In fact many world bodies such as the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organizations (UNESCO) have recently added Intellectual Property management to their operational portfolios. However, none seem to have utilized their IP resources in the furtherance of their goals, even though everyone in these global institutions seems to agree that IP management and Technology Commercialization are vital to their success.
Given AUTM’s position at the junction of technology and commerce, I would strongly advocate that AUTM consider reaching out to partner with the UN and the World Bank to launch a Global Development Initiative similar to the Global Health Initiative to realize all the MDGs and thus play a central role in making a Better World.
I would welcome any feedback in this regard as well as suggestions on how to bring such a partnership about.