Need to bring more innovation in Health, Education: Sibal

Updated on: Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Union Minister of HRD Kapil Sibal said that India has to bring more innovation to Health and Education sectors in order to continue converging with technologically advanced economies.

"We have to enhance our competitiveness. To do that requires support of a highly skilled workforce, innovation, technological upgradation and newer technology both in education and healthcare sector," Sibal said while addressing a seminar on 'Role of Technology, Knowledge and Innovation in Transforming India' here.
Citing the example of Indian telecom sector, Sibal said that India is the largest telephony in the world and has undergone a huge transformation in a decade which no other economy has achieved.

The number of mobile users has increased from a mere 1.3 million in 2000 to 720 million in 2010, while the call tariffs have gone down drastically from Rs 30 per minute then to 30 paise per minute now.

"We need to have this kind of transformation in the health and education sector. We need more public private partnerships to achieve this," the minister said.

Currently about 80 per cent of the healthcare sector is run by private entities and 90 per cent of the schools and colleges are handled by the Government, Sibal said adding that such model has to be changed and made more PPP intensive.

He further said that there was a need to tackle such structural inequities.

"We need to find solutions for inexpensive delivery systems, affordable vaccines...we have to find solutions and replicate them," Sibal stressed.

On the pharma sector, Sibal said that the success story of the industry is due to India's prowess in science and technology, as the sector has graduated from being an importer of complete formulations to manufacturer and exporter of quality drugs.

He further said that in a bid to boost more research in healthcare, biotech and pharma sectors, the Government is in the process of enacting a law on lines of USA's Bayah Dole Act, that will facilitate publicly funded R&D institutions in India to license out their intellectual property.

"I am sure that with this Act in place we shall see a burgeoning of inventions by Indian institutes. But we will need to convert these innovations in the market place. That will be our challenge," Sibal added.

He further said in a bid to make India an Innovation hot spot, the Government needs academia-industry collaborative relationships with open access to and resources free of IP entanglements.

Need to bring more innovation in Health, Education: Sibal

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