GCRF Inclusive societies: How to link industrial and social innovation for inclusive development: lessons from tackling cancer care in Africa

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Economic development that is inclusive of all its citizens requires appropriate and sustainable links between industrial and social policies. An inclusive health sector can produce a healthy and educated working population; industrial innovation and investment can generate the low cost commodities and services essential for universally accessible health care. However such beneficial interactions, linking social inclusion to industrialisation, have to be actively built at local level: a demanding process of centring decisions within the different domains of industrial, trade and social policies on identifying routes to equitable growth via universal access to care with industrial viability. This research aims to demonstrate "how to do it" in practical terms in low and middle income East Africa by tackling a "hard case" where current trends may actively generate inequality unless countered: access to cancer care. Cancer is an emerging health crisis in Sub-Saharan Africa: a sharply rising disease burden, very poorly diagnosed, that requires currently expensive medication and equipment not widely available, so that many go without treatment because of inability to pay. However, innovative technologies, and off-patent medicines offer potential for lower cost care: many of these are being developed in India, a country with a strong pharmaceutical industry and a track record of low cost production of health sector inputs. Furthermore, a number of African countries have a pharmaceutical industry that is actively upgrading to more complex technologies. In East Africa, much industrial production and innovation is strongly networked with Indian industrial partners and suppliers, including India-Africa joint ventures. This research brings together an expert cross-disciplinary team from East Africa, India and the UK to research the scope for linking innovation in industrial production and in health care to increase the accessibility of low cost cancer care, including prevention, diagnosis, treatment and management of disease, in Kenya and Tanzania. The research team aim to work across the public/private, industry/health, and India/Africa boundaries to generate and evaluate a number of scenarios for lower cost prevention, diagnosis, treatment and management of a range of cancers; and the scope for further innovation and for Africa-based industrial production of relevant technologies. These scenarios will bring together specific innovations in industry and health care, and will be developed, evaluated and debated interactively with key stakeholders in order to maximise the scope for impact on improving access to cancer care, and industrial development opportunities, in the East African context. We also expect India to benefit from new ideas for linking industrial innovation to health care need and access.Researchers will work actively from the start with health and industrial policy makers, manufacturers and regulators in India, East Africa. The East African team includes clinical expertise and expertise in health economics, epidemiology, health systems, industrial development and innovation; the Indian team is led by an expert in industrial-health linkages in the Indian context and includes health and industrial expertise; the UK team has strong expertise in innovation and technology management and scenario building and evaluation, as well as health-industrial linkages in African contexts. The team is built on substantial past research collaborations among team members and has long standing networks and competence in accessing collaboration from manufacturers; we have recruited an eminent international advisory panel to guide the research and dissemination.