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A workshop on the application of Knowledge Markets to health innovations will be held on 16 - 17 October, 2008 in Washington DC, USA. The Workshop will explore what knowledge markets are and how they might address inefficiencies in the innovation cycle, their current and potential future applications in the health sector, as well as the challenges and barriers to their widespread use.
Knowledge markets encompass a number of different mechanisms where buyers and sellers can trade a variety of knowledge intensive goods and services. They are a way of better identifying, accessing, exploiting, and creating value from existing intellectual assets. Knowledge markets can include infrastructures like IP exchanges and patent pools; networking, matching or brokering services; clearing houses; and auctions. Increasingly, there is interest in applying the concept of knowledge markets to the life sciences. Enormous amounts of data, information and knowledge are created throughout the health innovation cycle, much of which remains privately held.
In isolation, the information may not be of great value or the producer may not be fully able exploit it. But in combination with other information, it could arguably have greater value and strategic impact. Proprietary information that may have lost value for the owner over time might provide valuable insights to other companies that are pursuing different research tracks, helping them to avoid similar pitfalls (and thus from wasting resources) or redirecting them toward goals that were formerly unrealizable. Knowledge markets could also serve the needs of companies when meeting regulatory requirements—for example, by enabling them to avoid the costs of conducting repetitive clinical and preclinical tests.
In particular the Workshop will explore what benefits knowledge markets could bring to drug development, health innovation and health outcomes. The workshop will identify the types of data, knowledge and know-how that can create added value when traded, the mechanisms by which such exchange is or could in the future be realised. It will discuss the difficulties of developing knowledge markets in the life sciences, the existing pressures and initiatives that are driving their creation, as well as the facilitating role that public policy may have.
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