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The Road to Universal Health Care: R&D, Innovation and Access
The 13th New India Foundation Annual Girish Karnad Memorial Lecture
Speakers
Soumya Swaminathan will touch upon the history of R&D in India, the change in the patent laws, the start-up culture, government / private investment in research. She will speak about what is needed to fix the ecosystem for innovation to flourish and how to strengthen the pathway to scale up of innovations.
Ramachandra Guha will chair the session.
About New India Foundation:
The New India Foundation, based in Bangalore, uniquely matches public-spirited philanthropy with ground-breaking and relevant scholarship. In the six-and-a-half decades since Independence, there has been a large body of work produced by Indian historians and social scientists. Taken singly, many of these studies are very impressive; viewed cumulatively, they add up to much less than what one might expect. Given India’s size, its importance, and its interest, and given that this is our country, the lack of good research on its modern history is unfortunate. It is this lack that the New India Foundation seeks to address, by sponsoring high-quality original research on different aspects of independent India. Its activities include the granting of fellowships, the organizing of lectures, and the publication of books on the history and culture of independent India.
Speakers
Soumya Swaminathan
Dr. Sowmya Swaminathan was one of the three deputy director generals and the first Indian to hold the position at WHO. She has recently been appointed as Chief Scientist in the new chief scientist division created to strengthen WHO’s core scientific work. A paediatrician from India and a globally recognized researcher on tuberculosis and HIV, she brings with her 30 years of experience in clinical care and research and has worked throughout her career to translate research into impactful programmes. Dr Swaminathan was Secretary to the Government of India for Health Research and Director General of the Indian Council of Medical Research from 2015 to 2017. In that position, she focused on bringing science and evidence into health policy making, building research capacity in Indian medical schools and forging south-south partnerships in health sciences. From 2009 to 2011, she also served as Coordinator of the UNICEF/UNDP/World Bank/WHO Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases in Geneva.
She received her academic training in India, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the United States of America, and has published more than 350 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters. She is an elected Foreign Fellow of the US National Academy of Medicine and a Fellow of all three science academies in India. She has previously been on several WHO and global advisory bodies and committees, including the WHO Expert Panel to Review Global Strategy and Plan of Action on Public Health, Innovation and Intellectual Property, the Strategic and Technical Advisory Group of the Global TB Department at WHO, and most recently was Co-Chair of the Lancet Commission on TB.
