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Health Innovation ... in Practice
HIP seeks to promote and facilitate policy action around needs-driven innovation for health at the country and regional level, as well as across countries. In recent years, the international community has yielded new frameworks and strategies for governments to deal with essential health innovation. Yet these policies – the harvest of long and painstaking negotiations – still remain largely under-utilized because hardly any efforts have been made so far to translate them into concrete experiences and practices in countries. We would like to bridge this gap.
We believe that, well beyond the global producers of knowledge and global initiatives, it is local and national communities and policymakers that need to be informed and directly involved in designing their solutions to the health needs they are confronted with. That is why HIP’s main concern is to operate in a spirit of knowledge sharing and mutual learning, convinced as we are that innovation actors in countries are self-determining and autonomous partners, and that innovation entails an ampler spectrum of approaches and concerns than generally recognised in international circles.
Health Innovation ... Pathways
Whereas innovation in health is generally associated with a biomedical approach, the innovation scene in health is much more varied and populated with a diversity of actors and approaches. Most of them are sidelined in the ordinary international discourse about health innovation. It is important to be aware of the political and cultural linkages in countries to not only respect the variety and richness of home-grown strategies to solving health problems, but actually cajole this diversity, indeed a key ingredient for shaping future solutions to respond to health needs.
This diversity of knowledge in health is a common good that needs protecting as a matter of priority.
Health Innovation ... with People
There are many successful experiences in countries that have brought meaningful change to people in need. They have been conceived, developed, tested and implemented by creative and motivated people working in the public interest, who have gained expertise both from their failures as well as from their achievements, and who can draw lessons from their work. These lessons need to be shared and built on, to advance innovation.
Connecting researchers and other relevant actors, facilitating collaborations and interaction among people, especially from the south, is HIP’s aim. This endeavour presupposes a socio-political vision of a different and more just world. Work on needs-driven innovation in countries is our main social action approach, advocating for democracy, social justice and respect for human rights, and health for all.
We therefore consider this bridging approach among countries in need a crucial contribution to spearheading needs-driven innovation for health in resource poor settings, through the knowledge and commitment of people working for the public interest. Innovation by people, with people and for people: because it is useless, if its results do not reach the ones that need it most.
HIP is a non profit organization registered in Geneva, Switzerland.