Innovation for development: the key to a transformative recovery...
2.
Chapter II
The performance of the health science and technology subsystem in Latin America and the Caribbean
The percentage of GDP earmarked for R&D in health in Latin America is much lower than in OECD countries. While there is no aggregated information for the region, according to the Ibero-American Network on Science and Technology Indicators, in 2018, for “medical science” this indicator stood at 0.063% in Uruguay, 0.065% in Argentina and 0.042% in Chile. In the case of OECD countries, it is estimated that this figure reaches levels between 0.35% and 0.5% of GDP (OECD, 2018), greatly surpassing the performance of Latin American and Caribbean countries.4 Medical sciences account for between 10% and 20% of the R&D expenditure of countries in the region (see chapter I). The creation of a solid base of researchers in health sciences and biotechnology has resulted in a large proportion of these funds going to universities and technology institutes. The majority of R&D activity in Latin American and Caribbean countries therefore tends to take place in universities and public laboratories, where these exist. This has led to a sustained increase in the number of international scientific publications, as shown in figure II.3. Figure II.3 Latin America (7 countries): publications on MEDLINE, 2015–2019 40 000 35 000 30 000 25 000 20 000 15 000 10 000 5 000 0
Argentina
Brazil
Chile
Colombia
Mexico
Peru
Uruguay
2015 2016 2017 2018 2019
Source: Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), on the basis of official information from Ibero-American Network on Science and Technology Indicators (RICYT).
Regional enterprises do not participate in the sophisticated innovation dynamics seen in developed countries and, increasingly, in countries such as China and the Republic of Korea. These dynamics include the introduction of innovative medications or devices into markets, with the aim of earning significant profits by means of patent protection. In the case of the regional pharmaceutical industry, where the majority of pharmaceuticals produced are based on generic active ingredients, R&D activities are limited to developing medicines, conducting medical research and carrying out small-scale clinical trials to obtain authorization for their drugs on the local market. At an aggregated level, there is also little evidence of innovative efforts in the medical device industries in the region. There are multiple reasons for this. On the one hand, multinational companies have not 4
According to OECD (2018), in 2014, government budgets for health-related R&D in OECD countries reached 0.1% of regional GDP, alongside the between 0.05% and 0.2% allocated to university research and the 0.2% for research conducted by enterprises. On this basis, it can be estimated that between 0.35% and 0.5% of GDP is invested in health-related R&D.
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