Study: U.S. at Risk of Losing Global Lead in Medical Innovation

The Council for American Medical Innovation - White House Coordination, Federal Policy Agenda Needed to Reverse Downward Trend; Near-Term Opportunity Exists to Create Jobs, Address National Deficit and Cure Life-Threatening Disease. CAMI - launched in 2009, has brought together leaders in research, medicine, public health, academia, education, labor, and business, who are working in partnership to encourage public policies that advance medical innovation and the development of lifesaving treatments, enhance job growth, and promote patient access. Download the complete report and appendix here

Based on the core findings of the Battelle study, as well as the thousands of conversations and idea-sharing sessions held across the country, CAMI today outlined the following near-term priorities to help drive this targeted framework:

• White House-Level Leadership: CAMI is calling on the Obama administration to give an appropriate federal office the responsibility to lead collaborative efforts to address the key challenges we face. Coordinating efforts at the highest levels of government is essential to ensuring near-term progress.
• Forming Unique Public-Private Partnerships: One consistent theme heard across the past year and cited in the study is that neither government nor the private sector is positioned to address single-handedly the challenges to America’s leadership in biomedical innovation. Creating jobs, finding cures, and ensuring U.S. competitiveness for decades to come requires a coordinated national effort that engages leaders in the public and private sectors. For example, public-private collaboration is needed to bridge the gap referred to as the “valley of death” that exists between early-stage research, often funded through public sources, and later-stage development projects funded by private-sector sources. This gap currently delays the availability of new life-saving medicines, treatments, and technologies.
• Strengthening Investments in R&D and Manufacturing to Foster Job Growth and Enhance U.S. Competitiveness: Congress has a near-term opportunity to make the federal R&D tax credit permanent and raise it to levels that make it globally competitive, thus providing incentives for investment that will serve as a cornerstone of a national medical innovation agenda. CAMI also urges the federal government to adopt tax and economic incentives that will help boost manufacturing and export-related job growth resulting from medical innovation.
• Enhancing Regulatory Sciences Efforts at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA): CAMI is calling on federal leaders to strengthen and meaningfully fund a collaborative effort to develop a Regulatory Sciences Roadmap that builds upon and advances existing efforts to bring the best science to the review and approval of biomedical advances.
• Increasing the U.S. Biosciences Talent Pool: With the U.S. falling behind other nations in math and science test scores and the technical skills needed to fuel a knowledge-based economy, CAMI is calling for targeted federal support for the biosciences through K-12 science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education efforts, bioscience teacher preparation and professional development.

Hat Tip: Innovation Daily