COVID-19 Highlights Innovation Failures of the Current Patent-Based Innovation Model: What is the Way Forward?

The COVID-19 is novel but it was not unforeseen or out of blue. The risk of this pandemic was well anticipated as the 2019 Annual Report on Global Preparedness for Health Emergencies warned of a very real threat of a rapidly evolving, highly lethal respiratory pathogen pandemic that could wipe out 5% of the world economy. The current innovation model, based on commercial interests, failed to respond to this threat because of low probability of earning high profits. The current global health crisis is just one example. The failures of the current innovation model are neither new nor few. Zika (2015-16) and Ebola (2014-16) are examples from the recent past.
Without public funding and government interventions, the current innovation model does not ensure timely, equitable and affordable universal access to diagnostics, medicines, vaccines, treatments, and needed health technologies in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The patent system's monetary rewards are designed in such a way that it discourages investment in the discovery of drugs for which market returns are small or uncertain. The COVID-19 pandemic highlights the innovation failures of the current patent system and creates an opportunity for policy makers to rethink the effectiveness of the current innovation model. Moreover, the current innovation model, based on commercial interests, is arguably expensive and inefficient in responding to poor countries’ health problems - like neglected diseases.
There is an urgent need for a sustainable and responsive complementary health-based innovation model to meet the formidable challenges of global health crisis in an efficient and cost-effective manner. This paper endeavours to critically evaluate the effectiveness of the current innovation model in relation to needs of underprivileged patients in poor countries and in responding to global health crisis. Part II of this paper discusses some of the key innovation failures of the current patent system. Part III focuses on addressing the failures of the current patent system. It considers what would be the way forward to deal with the current and future health problems of both developing and developed countries. It considers multiple policy options like Open-Source drug discovery, use of prizes, rewards and grants, medicines patent pools, public-private partnerships, and establishment of an international public fund for collaborative pharmaceutical R&D to address the access and innovation failures of the current innovation model.
The World Health Organization’s COVID-19 Vaccine Global Access (COVAX) facility is a step in the right direction to address some of the key issues but it is only an ad hoc arrangement hastily crafted in response to the current pandemic. This paper argues that there is a need to address the longstanding and recurring problem of equitable access to vaccines and other health technologies through a permanent multilateral arrangement – backed by a binding international legal instrument - to broaden inclusive procurement and R&D models. Low- and middle-income countries should use the impetus of COVID-19 to press for a permanent international governance structure or platform which ensures a greater centralized and internationalized approach to development and procurement of vaccines and essential medicines transparently and equitably.