From Wim Parys, Global Head, Infectious Diseases Therapeutic Area, Janssen R&D
This week, I had the opportunity to join a Johnson & Johnson delegation attending the Pacific Health Summit, to meet with global health leaders and discuss an important question facing all of us: how do we get appropriate technologies to the right people at the right price? The theme of this year’s Summit revolved around “Game Changers” — those innovations that make products and services as accessible and affordable for developing nations as they are in the developing world.
Dr. Paul Janssen, our company’s namesake, recognized that transformative healthcare solutions depend on “what’s new”. Our collective challenge is to advance technological innovation in ways that balance reward, affordability for patients and uncompromising quality. To get there, innovation needs sustained nurturing, investors need compensation for the costs and risks of investing in R&D, and researchers need ways to identify, develop, and bring to market the most effective solutions.
That’s why collaboration is so important. During the conference I spoke of our work with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to address neglected tropical diseases, our cooperation with the International Partnership for Microbicides (IPM) to support the development of microbicides to help women prevent sexual transmission of HIV, and our collaboration with the TB Alliance to develop the first new treatment for tuberculosis in more than 40 years. These novel, cross-sector partnerships enable us to tap a wider range of expertise, capabilities and resources, to share in the benefits and costs of innovation, and to yield more useful and affordable technologies and solutions that will contribute to new advances in healthcare.
Individually, each of us is able to bring forward new ideas and approaches that help to extend and improve patient lives. But to make a meaningful change on a global scale – to address the aging and growing world population and to harness the power of exponential advances in health technologies – we must embrace new collaborative models that amplify our collective impact.