OECD International Futures Project on “The Bioeconomy to 2030: Designing a Policy Agenda”. Health Biotechnology to 2030

This is a report commissioned by the OECD. Innogen was asked to write a scenario report for the OECD International Futures Programme to consider the pathways that health biotechnologies could follow, the future trajectory of the bio-economy primarily in the context of human health and the likely societal, economic and policy impacts of these projected outcomes, focusing on the period 2015 to 2030 . We chose as a starting point a world health care system that, from the perspective of potential impacts of biotechnology, has been mainly under the influence of the innovation model of the multinational drug companies. To date the scope and inventiveness of this model has been constrained by the expensive and lengthy regulatory systems that act as a barrier to entry for small companies that could challenge the industry status quo and our report focuses on the need for regulatory change as a prelude to the emergence of a new, more radically innovative, health care sector. In the absence of such change our scenario predicts a health care sector that is increasingly populated by pharmaceutical commodity producers, research and development focused on incremental, piecemeal change, lack of both public and private sector funding, dysfunctional competition within and between companies and adversarial relationships with regulators. A radical change scenario on the other hand “Networked Health Care” would depend on regulatory agencies collaborating, as an integral component of the innovation system, in the proactive development of new, smarter regulatory approaches to the generation of benefits based on fundamental discoveries in life sciences. Our report describes the pre-conditions needed to lead to the more positive scenario and the roles of key actors in promoting or resisting such changes

Interdisciplinary Research Journeys

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Interdisciplinarity' has become a rallying cry among funders and leaders of research. Yet, while the creative potential of interdisciplinary research is great, it poses many challenges. If you don't have disciplinary boundaries, how do you decide what to include or leave out? And what are the parameters for evaluating the research? This book provides a practical guide for researchers and research managers who are seeking to develop interdisciplinary research strategies at a personal, institutional and multi-institutional level. The book draws on examples from across the social and natural sciences but also offers valuable lessons for other combinations of more proximate disciplines. At a time when interdisciplinary research is increasingly centre stage in the research agenda, this book offers a crucial practical guide for researchers, research funders and managers from all backgrounds and contexts