Towards Forum 2012!

Our Institute has been working with COHRED for one year on the MDGs and health technologies issues. This led us to contribute to their COHRED-GFHR Forum 2012 to be held in Cape Town, South Africa April 24-26. 

This great event will bring together people from various backgrounds and countries: scientists, international institution and civil society representatives, NGOs, health authorities… around 3 themes:

• Theme 1: Improving and increasing investments in research and innovation
• Theme 2: Networking and partnership for research and innovation
• Theme 3: Creating environment that support research and innovation

Aviesan Session – April 25^th 2012

Theme 3: Creating environments that support R&I “Challenges and Successes in the Transfer of technology to low and middle income countries”

On Thursday April 25^th, the Institute of Health Technologies, part of Aviesan, will lead a session which will examine the challenges and successes of transferring technology to LMICs . This will be also the opportunity to give an update on HTech4Dev, the international initiative led by the Institute for Health Technologies.

13:30	Welcome
	François HIRSCH, Aviesan Introduction
Part 1 – Technologies overview
13:40	Nanotechnologies for Health François BERGER, Aviesan Nano-medicine: new business models on high tech medical devices Rome JUTABHA, National Innovation Agency, Thailand Nano-Medicine: The Potential Versus The Pitfalls – A Clinician’s Perspective Conor BURKE, Biomedical Diagnostics Institute, Ireland Development of Point-of-Care Diagnostic Platforms for Applications in Global Health
14:30	Telemedicine Bram RAMJIAWAN, Saint-Boniface Hospital, Canada The Canadian model Zakir M. SIKDER, Telemedicine Reference Center Ltd., Bangladesh The Bangladeshi model
15:00-15:30	Market Place - Coffee Break - Priority Setting Café
Part 2 – Intellectual Property Issues and Technology Transfer
15:00	Keynote speech Julian KINDERLERER, Cape Town University, E.G.E. Brussels IP Issues in the context of LMICs
15:50	Health Technologies for Development François HIRSCH, Aviesan  Health Technologies for Development (HTech4Dev initiative) Marie-Paule KIENY, WHO Assistant Director-General  ‘ Innovation, Information, Evidence and Research’ Local production in support of access to medical technologies
16:15	Round Table : Specificity and challenges to be addressed on health technologies transfer in LMICs Chairman: Jacques GRASSI, CVT Sud, Aviesan; Guests: Konji SEBATI, WIPO – Mario OTTIGLIO, IFPMA Associate Director, Public Affairs & Global Health – Julian KINDERLERER, Cape Town University, E.G.E. Brussels
Part 3 – Civil Society Perspectives
17:30	Keynote speech Godfrey TANGWA, Yaounde University, Cameroon Transfer of Technology: telemedicine and nanotechnologies in the African context, prospects and challenges
18:00	End of the session

We are looking forward to meeting you there and discussing these crucial issues for development with you!

Interesting links:

• Forum 2012 whole program
• Topics Theme 3
• Active blogs

Meeting with the Sanofi-Espoir Foundation

We had the pleasure to meet with the Foundation Managing Director and the Partnership Program Senior Manager to present our initiative and the projects we support.

Founded on October 2, 2010, by Sanofi-Aventis Group, the Sanofi Espoir Corporate Foundation is tasked with supporting actions of general interest in the healthcare field on an international scale.

The Foundation's mission is to contribute to reducing health inequalities, particularly among the most needy, by focusing on key issues in prevention, training and access to care.

Talking about health and development with them made us realize how important it is to work on the project construction to come up with strong partnerships between the technology implementation and the local network to be set up around the targeted population.

Sanofi-Espoir Foundation could thus support projects aiming at improving access to healthcare and involving community healthcare people. These projects actually need to follow strict criteria to be considered: see their Guidelines to select projects. Projects involving vaccines or medicines will be be  considered by Sanofi Coporate or Sanofi-Pasteur.

As far as our HTech4Dev Initiative is concerned, two projects might fit in the Foundation scope:

• Cameroon: Anemia and Calcemia monitoring and treatment for adult women in Douala area.

• Senegal: Medical Record System

To allow these projects to meet the Foundation criteria, for each we have established a multi-disciplinary steering committee with 2 clear tasks:
-       helping to identify the best relevant technology;
-       helping to present a solid structure with an active local healthcare network aiming at  facilitating the social acceptance of the new devices.