Engaging healthcare providers and patients on climate action through physical, emotional and social wellness

According to the World Health Organization, the health challenges from climate change are many and varied including: Malnutrition due to lack of quality food access. Mental health challenges in addition to severe socioeconomic challenges, through the loss of homes, jobs and needed social connections due to extreme events. Acute illness and the risk of water-borne diseases associated with lack of access to clean water. The increased risk of vector-borne diseases with warmer temperatures. Chronic illnesses associated with heat stress and pollution. Death from cardiovascular and respiratory disease, particularly among vulnerable people as temperatures rise to extreme levels. Both healthcare providers and patients must be engaged on climate change and action. While several medical training institutions are exploring opportunities to embed climate change and health education into their curricula, of importance are the holistic strategies to engage patients on climate action. The challenges are complex, and the data is overwhelming. Patients may not fully comprehend the personal implications of climate change and as citizens, may not understand their role in climate action. We suggest through the creation of a sustainable living mindset based on wellness, it is possible for healthcare providers to create a personal and emotional connection to climate action. The results from workshops with older adults are shared in this paper, demonstrating how the link to physical, emotional and social wellness, can encourage behavior change with respect to dietary and consumption practices as well as increased connection to and protection of greenspaces for health and well-being. &nbsp

A Knowledge Perspective of Strategic Alliances and Management of Biopharmaceutical Innovation: Evolving Research Paradigms

Information from the Human Genome Project is being integrated into the drug discovery and development process to permit novel drug targets to be identified, clinical trial testing to be made more efficient, and efficacious therapeutics to be approved and made widely available. Knowledge of the genome will allow for the description and quantification of disease and susceptibility to disease as informational errors or deficits. The creation and application of knowledge occur through cooperative or competitive interactions, often reflecting the perceived value of the knowledge. The public or private value of the knowledge, both for itself and for potential applications, can be determined through an understanding of the classification and characterization of this knowledge, as well as the position of the knowledge within the drug discovery and development pipeline. The transformation of knowledge from a purely public good to a quasi-private good has highlighted the need for balance between incentives for the market provision of scientific and technological knowledge by an innovator and incentives for the market provision of incremental knowledge by a follow-on developer. It has been suggested that a patent system developed for a discrete model of innovation may no longer be optimal for an information-based, cumulative model of innovation. Consequently, it is necessary to reanalyze models of intellectual property protection and strategies of knowledge sharing in biopharmaceutical discovery research. Under certain conditions, the biotech commons is an efficient institution that can preserve downstream opportunities for multiple researchers fairly and efficiently. A framework for classifying and characterizing discovery knowledge is developed in this research and the role of research consortia in preserving the biotech commons is analyzed. This study also addresses the value of pooling versus unilaterally holding knowledge, the benefits associated with appropriating from the commons, the role of knowledge characteristics in bargaining between licensor and licensee, and the overall management of the biotech commons

Opsoclonus-Myoclonus Presenting With Features of Spasmus Nutans

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/66540/2/10.1177_088307389501000117.pd

Developing Student Collaborations across Disciplines, Distances, and Institutions

Because quantitative biology requires skills and concepts from a disparate collection of different disciplines, the scientists of the near future will increasingly need to rely on collaborations to produce results. Correspondingly, students in disciplines impacted by quantitative biology will need to be taught how to create and engage in such collaborations. In response to this important curricular need, East Tennessee State University and Georgia Technological University/Emory University cooperated in an unprecedented curricular experiment in which theoretically oriented students at East Tennessee State designed biophysical models that were implemented and tested experimentally by biomedical engineers at the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Technological University and Emory University. Implementing the collaborations between two institutions allowed an assessment of the student collaborations from before the groups of students had met for the first time until after they had finished their projects, thus providing insight about the formation and conduct of such collaborations that could not have been obtained otherwise

Open-source approaches for the repurposing of existing or failed candidate drugs: learning from and applying the lessons across diseases

Minna Allarakhia Department of Management Sciences, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada Abstract: Repurposing has the objective of targeting existing drugs and failed, abandoned, or yet-to-be-pursued clinical candidates to new disease areas. The open-source model permits for the sharing of data, resources, compounds, clinical molecules, small libraries, and screening platforms to cost-effectively advance old drugs and/or candidates into clinical re-development. Clearly, at the core of drug-repurposing activities is collaboration, in many cases progressing beyond the open sharing of resources, technology, and intellectual property, to the sharing of facilities and joint program development to foster drug-repurposing human-capacity development. A variety of initiatives under way for drug repurposing, including those targeting rare and neglected diseases, are discussed in this review and provide insight into the stakeholders engaged in drug-repurposing discovery, the models of collaboration used, the intellectual property-management policies crafted, and human capacity developed. In the case of neglected tropical diseases, it is suggested that the development of human capital be a central aspect of drug-repurposing programs. Open-source models can support human-capital development through collaborative data generation, open compound access, open and collaborative screening, preclinical and possibly clinical studies. Given the urgency of drug development for neglected tropical diseases, the review suggests elements from current repurposing programs be extended to the neglected tropical diseases arena. Keywords: repurposing, open source, rare diseases, neglected tropical diseases, models of collaboration, human-capacity developmen

Open source biopharmaceutical innovation:a mode of entry for firms in emerging markets

The open source model provides a valuable framework for collective knowledge production and dissemination. Mirroring the efforts of the open source community that developed Linux, open biopharmaceutical initiatives are enabling companies to access knowledge-based resources critical to drug development. The objective of these initiatives is to preserve the downstream technological opportunities for multiple firms. As economies in emerging markets enter the biopharmaceutical arena, it is essential that developed economies share not only technological expertise, but also their experiences regarding knowledge production and dissemination. The goals should be to assist these economies to participate on a level playing field with respect to market entry and product development, to protect local knowledge, and ensure fair access to global knowledge as well as technology. Maintaining and building the public domain with particular attention to knowledge that is of benefit to these economies can allow researchers to quickly and cost-effectively access knowledge. In this paper, two models are developed to understand how open source strategic alliances and open licensing can be used as modes of entry into the biopharmaceutical industry by firms in emerging markets. Case examples and qualitative data are both used to provide a basis for these models

Analyzing and organizing nanotechnology development: Application of the institutional analysis development framework to nanotechnology consortia

Governments and companies around the globe have embraced nanotechnology as a strategically critical pan industrial technology. Many view it as one of the essential foundation technology bases of the next Schumpeterian wave. A number of commercial and government sponsored groups have developed a variety of consortia centered on the commercial promise of nanotechnology. Yet the optimal management of these consortia has proven elusive to the point that some suggest that they cannot be managed at all. If these consortia are important, and their effective management crucial, then there is cause for concern. We utilize the case study method to create a nanotechnology consortia management diagnostic model based on institutional analysis development (IAD). Nanotechnology consortia are formed for a variety of purposes and their stakeholders include governments, industries, large firms, SME, entrepreneurial enterprises, and supporting firms