Industrial health research in Canada

In his commentary on the pharmaceutical industry, Henry Mintzberg recommends several measures that are already in place in Canada.¹ He recommends firmer regulation of pricing, but Canada is unique in that it has 2 levels of price control, at the federal and provincial levels. He also recommends independent clearing houses for information on health products, but Canada already has a plethora of these at the federal and provincial levels, in addition to scientific bodies and journals. In addition, he suggests that direct-to-consumer advertising should be stopped, but it is currently forbidden in Canada.

A more important issue, in my opinion, is the unimpressive condition of industrial health research in Canada. Although we have the third-largest number of biotechnology companies in the world after the United States and the United Kingdom, our country is at the bottom of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's ranking for industrial health research and development.

Unfortunately, Canadian discoveries are often developed elsewhere. Instead of blaming the pharmaceutical industry for developing and commercializing health products discovered by biotechnology companies, we should establish conditions that will convince them to do this work in Canada. Instead of finding fault with intellectual property regulations as they apply to novel health products, we should see that they are strengthened in Canada. Instead of taking issue with the pharmaceutical industry's research priorities (saying, for example, that industry should study the causes of breast cancer and not its cures), we should make sure that the environment in Canada encourages industrial research and development. Instead of lamenting the increasing numbers of health researchers in industry, we should boost the inappropriately small number of people doing industrial health research in Canada.

Mintzberg is world-renowned for his studies in management and strategic planning. He should now focus on developing a genuine pharmaceutical strategy for Canada: this must be a priority for our health care delivery system.