As the Covid-19 pandemic has spread throughout the world, there have been inevitable discussions around how governments can better plan for similar pandemics in the future.  New research from the University of Bath examines the topic from an innovation perspective and ponders what lessons we can learn both from the Covid pandemic and previous disease outbreaks.

“What lessons can we draw from the innovation response to COVID-19 about the drivers of innovation, and how can it inform the global effort to scale up innovation to fight other deadly diseases?” the researchers ponder.

Diminishing effort

The research finds that there is a clear sense of diminishing effort with regard to pharmaceutical R&D.  For instance, despite the global death burden of diseases doubling, the R&D effort only increases by 50%.  Covid was a notable exception to this general principle, with up to 20 times as many clinical trials as would ordinarily be expected.

This was generally an increase across the board, with no significant decline in trial activity for other diseases.  A lot of this scientific response came via public research institutions, which the researchers suggest accounted for around 70% of all Covid trials.

This public involvement was often highly effective, with countries like China and the US providing early incentives for vaccine development, which significantly expedited their progress.

Making improvements

The findings suggest that there is clearly a crucial role to be played by both public research institutions and government incentives in augmenting any private response to future pandemics.

“The rate and direction of innovation is shaped by incentives and government policy actions,” the researchers conclude. “Traditionally, economists have emphasised the market size as an important driver for innovation – the greater the private demand for an innovation, the more innovation we should expect in that domain.”

“However, this may not be sufficient by itself to encourage innovation to address the deadliest diseases – from coronary heart disease to lung cancer, or indeed other major challenges facing humanity, namely climate change. Instead, the response to COVID-19 suggests that scaling up global innovation in the future may require complementing the market size effect with early-stage incentives that harness the power public research institutions and non-monetary incentive, for example altruism.”