“The real antidote to epidemic is not segregation, but rather cooperation.” – Yuval Noah Harari
With the progression of the pandemic, many technocentric innovations and solutions are gaining traction. Learning from our previous experiences of dealing with outbreaks such as SARS, Ebola etc., the global community is increasingly relying on science, technology and data driven policies to fight the pandemic. The pandemic demands swift reactions – be it in terms of public health response, understanding epidemiology of the virus or mapping out the spread on both global and national level- it involves greater collaboration between stakeholders at different levels.
Openness is a concept that has been gaining traction during the pandemic. The scale of the spread of the disease has in a way proved to be a fertile ground for this movement to foster. The main lessons from this pandemic has been that it is important to have openness in both handling the scientific data and in managing collaborations.
Highlighting the need for public health data
Public health emergencies are an opportunity to collect data for research, generating evidence to enhance responses to an ongoing outbreak as well as future outbreaks. Data that is verified, longitudinal and varied is needed to help us better understand the impact of the disease on the population and health systems. Timely data can facilitate targeting of resources to control the spread of infection, promote the use of evidence-based interventions for treatment or prevention, avoid duplication of efforts and ensure the efficiency of emergency responses. In addition, analysis, and sometimes pooling of data from multiple sources, can generate a clearer picture of the epidemiology of infection, pathophysiology and intervention effectiveness.
While the need for data sharing has been acknowledged across the world, it is important to understand the modalities of such transfer, and the regulatory, and legal implications. In addition to this, we are reminded of the need for developing systems that are resilient enough to be useful during an emergency. Creating secure databases, technical systems and governance models for research and collaboration is vital in strategising for a pandemic/public health emergency.
Open Access and Collaboration
Scientific data is being shared on datahubs and databases with the aim of allowing greater access to more number of researchers, and to foster collaboration. One such database is the Global Initiative on Sharing Avian Influenza Data (GISAID). It is a data sharing and collaboration platform. It is an open source platform, where genome data, along with associated clinical and epidemiological data is shared, and then collaboratively analysed and published. GISAID has been crucial in determining the genetic sequence of the COVID-19 virus. The genome sequence of COVID-19 virus is then used to design and evaluate diagnostic tests, to track and trace the ongoing outbreak and to identify potential intervention options. This database provides a set of rules in the form of a database access agreement that the providers and users need to adhere to for sharing, accessing and using the data. The terms of the agreement also stipulate that the data used must validly credit the providers of the data, and also It also mentions that it is the sole responsibility of the user of data to obtain any additional authorization or license as may be necessary for the use of the Data.
COVID-19 Open Research Dataset (CORD-19) provides more than 44,000 articles about COVID-19 and the coronavirus family of viruses in a centralized hub in a machine-readable format, making it easier for use by the global machine learning community. Currently, CORD-19 is the most extensive coronavirus literature collection available for data and text mining. MiPasa, another data hub that collects COVID-19 clinical data and laboratory data, is being assembled by the World Health Organization in partnership with technology companies.
International Severe Acute Respiratory and Emerging Infection Consortium (ISARIC) is also a global initiative, aiming to develop and share open access protocols and harmonised data-sharing processes. In response to COVID-19, the ISARIC-WHO COVID-19 Case Record Form (CRF) enables the collection of standardised clinical data to inform patient management and the public health response. ISARIC tries to rectify the issue of lack of standardisation amongst the national surveillance networks, thus making rapid dissemination more effective.
Open access to research articles is already a very widely adopted practice, and with quickly increasing rates of open access publishing, as well as an abundance of funder, learned society, and institutional policies in support of it, the tide has already turned towards open access.
Actors in the academic system have swiftly responded, and especially journals have made large strides towards openness by nearly universally granting open access to articles on corona-related research (including publishing giants Elsevier, Springer Nature, and Wiley). The Allen Institute for AI has collated a massive set of articles on related research, and this collection is the basis for an analysis challenge to create text and data mining tools for answering COVID-related questions.
IP Regime and public benefit
Governments around the world are taking steps to check moves from private corporations from claiming profits at a crucial time by monopolising production and knowledge. There are indications to suggest that the health crisis will overcede the monopoly rights of any developer. More and more States are talking of suspending IP rights, or establishing a regime of compulsory licensing. Canada’s recent COVID-19 bill authorizes the government to make and use patented inventions as needed in fighting the pandemic. Governments in Chile, Ecuador, Germany, and Israel have taken similar steps.
Especially from a developing country perspective, it is an interesting development to keep track of. When the resources are scarce, and the inventions are usually overpriced to an extent that it is not affordable, these measures are resorted to. Compulsory licensing is often touted as an alternative for fighting public health crises.
A group of US scholars and scientists have created a template ‘pledge’ for IP holders to invoke for licensing their intellectual property portfolios. The Open IP Pledge allows for a royalty-free patent license that allows entities to use protected IP for the purpose of tackling Covid-19. The pledge suspends the license if the licensee attempts to assert any intellectual property right against the pledgor. The pledge also imposes a valid time restriction, for the use of IP rights. This ensures that the IP is strictly used for the purpose of fighting the pandemic, and the commercial interests of the pledging companies are protected in the long run.
Voluntary arrangements remain important instruments to consider adopting and advocating for, however, the reliance on such voluntary grants from commercial entities also indicate the dependence of public health systems and scientific research on increasing patent monopolies and the enclosure of public health research by commercial firms.
Conclusion
Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable(FAIR) scientific data must be looked at as a means to drive innovations in the future. We need global and national frameworks that respect individual researchers, and also foster an environment of collaboration. We need better incentive models for academic research. Currently, academic publishing and collaboration is stuck in a culture that denies access to the public, and other researchers. Factors that lead to this are expensive paywalls, need for academic recognition and the consequent fear of not receiving credit for the findings, corporates monopolising research with IP rights. In a pandemic such as now, these blatant gaps in our culture, and IP laws are glaring at our faces.
Another aspect to consider is the lack of support for the research culture in India,in comparison with the developed countries. A lack of requisite infrastructure and financial backing to innovate is a setback for the community. It is high time we unlock the potential and rethink ways to incentivise research.
Karthik Venkatesh is the Research Coordinator with The Dialogue.
