Harvard Taking Concrete Steps to Implement SPS

Last November, a number of universities responded to UAEM’s call to implement global access licensing to ensure affordable access to university-discovered medicines in developing countries. Harvard, Yale and a number of other signatories released the “Statement of Principles and Strategies for the Equitable Dissemination of Medical Technologies” (SPS) which committed them to a number of principles that UAEM thinks will take important steps to improve access, though we do have a number of concerns about the principles we want to see addressed in future iterations and by individual signatories.

Last Friday, (April 16) UAEMers from the Harvard chapter and the international organization along with Harvard Law professor Yochai Benkler where invited by the Harvard Office of Technology Development (OTD) to discuss their implementation of the SPS and we were impressed by what we heard as well as the open and collaborative spirit with which the members of the OTD, director Isaac Kohlberg, and his staff Maryanne Fenerjian and Cris Rothfuss, approached the conversation. The OTD has definitely put a lot of thought into how they can effectively implement the principles and have taken important steps to put principles to practice. OTD has invited us back for a bi-annual review along with regular dialogue – we’re looking forward to continuing to work with the office.

We hope that other schools will be as open, collaborative and proactive in implementing the SPS as Harvard has been to-date.