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Creating a knowledge economy in healthcare and transforming inventions into innovations that can benefit patients was the focus of the fourth Academic Health System (AHS) Lecture in 2014 held at Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC). The lecture was delivered by Dr Erik Stenehjem, Executive Director of Intellectual Property and Technology Transfer at Qatar Foundation.
Inventions are ideas created by research, while innovations are products that are available to all of us, such as new therapies or treatments for disease. Strengthening competitiveness in transforming inventions into innovations is very important to HMC because it is conducting a lot of research. In addition to the practice of medicine, the doctors are involved in the development of new tools, methods and medical procedures, and all of these have the potential to be moved into the market as innovations, said Dr Stenehjem.
Dr Stenehjem discussed the various aspects to be considered and the steps that researchers need to take to successfully make the journey from inventions to innovations, such as obtaining intellectual property rights to new inventions, which will exclude others from copying them and enable firms and individuals to invest the resources needed to transform them to innovations.
Prior to his appointment at Qatar Foundation in March 2013, Dr Stenehjem was director of the US-based Lawrence Livermore National Laboratorys industrial partnerships office, responsible for moving leading-edge technologies developed by laboratory scientists and engineers into the marketplace. I am excited to be given the opportunity to be involved in creating a new knowledge-based economy with the resources and the commitment that Qatar has, he said.
Dr Stenehjems work involves building the infrastructure and the capacity to identify and detect new innovations arising from supported research, and helping transform them into innovations through commercialization for the benefit of Qatar, the region and the global community, HMCs Executive Director of Research Dr Ibrahim Janahi said.
Dr Janahi said that the AHS has this year launched an Innovation Award as a mechanism to support the development of ideas into innovation. Building capability in this area is part of the AHS commitment to the creation of new knowledge that will translate into real and tangible benefits for patients and contribute to the health and well-being of the population, he explained.
The AHS in Qatar is a dynamic network integrating research, education and clinical care to focus on improving patient care and delivering innovative healthcare solutions. The first partnership of its kind in the MENA region and the worlds first nationwide AHS, it consists of eight partners: HMC, Weill Cornell Medical College-Qatar, Sidra Medical and Research Center, Qatar Biomedical Research Institute, College of the North Atlantic-Qatar, the Primary Health Care Corporation, Qatar University and University of Calgary-Qatar.
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