Rwanda Biomedical Centre (RBC) has launched a new platform that is aimed at promoting and increasing medical science and innovation in the country.
Dubbed the Science and Innovation Platform, it seeks to address a number of gaps in the country’s health science and innovation sector, which include: limited skills and expertise, insufficient sustainable financing mechanisms, limited scale up of products emerging from research and innovation, inadequate participation of the private sector and industry players in such projects, as well as challenges related to regulatory framework.
During the launch of the platform held on Monday, August 30, Noella Bigirimana, the Division Manager the Research, Innovation and Data Science Division at RBC, said the platform will be responsible for developing and implementing sustainable mechanisms for investment in research and innovation for health, increasing engagement of health care partners in Research and Development (R and D) and innovation, strengthening regulatory systems, IP protection and knowledge transfer, as well as enhancing the impact of science and innovation in healthcare.
"We are looking at investing in health research and innovation as something that is very important for social and economic development,” she said.
She noted that the platform will have priority goals of strengthening retention and incentives of professionals in health research and innovation sector, improving resource mobilisation and revenue generation in the field, advancing transitional research from data to policy, and from research to clinical context.
"What we aim to do is advance the translation of research. When we do research and have breakthroughs and findings, we want it to influence policy and our practices,” she said.
"We also look at this platform as an avenue for resource mobilisation; there is need to increase funding towards this area.”
The platform will also look to increase collaborations between scientists, research, academia and industry partners, as its members include government, private sector industry, technology partners, public health specialists, academia and research centres and clinicians among others.
The initiative has a number of core areas of focus for research and innovation, including: epidemiology and biostatistics, digital health, laboratory and diagnosis, among others.
It also aims at promoting potential intellectual property or patent generation for research and innovation done in the country.
In an earlier interview with The New Times, Geofrey Beingana, a pharmacist and Global Health Specialist said intellectual property will be getting important for the country going forward, since the local pharmaceutical sector is starting to grow towards the possibility of making its own inventions.
"With the coming up of pharmaceutical plants in Rwanda, we need such legislations. At the moment we are having about 3 pharmaceutical plants that are already in establishment in the country. We are moving in the right direction for better research and development of our own molecules,” he added.
Eugene Mutimura, the Executive Secretary of the National Council for Science and Technology (NCST), speaking to the participants in the launch event on Monday reflected on the importance of science and technology in the development of the country,
"Science and technology is a critically important enabler and a core driver for all that we do to promote our country to become a knowledge-based economy that pertains to the wellbeing of the people but also supporting industrial development as well as research that impacts on the wellbeing of the people,” he said.
The new platform is being created as local health research continues to create waves on the global scene. Speaking during an earlier event, the RBC Director General Dr Sabin Nsanzimana noted that two local studies have been able to discover new variants of Tuberculosis and Malaria.