National Innovation Council addresses the management of biopharmaceutical innovation

The National Innovation Council (CNI) meets on September 27, 2021 with the central theme "Experiences in the management of innovation in the biopharmaceutical sector." The First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, indicated to conceptualize the innovation processes that are applied in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical area for their analysis and implementation in the rest of the business sector. He also indicated to collect in a document the practices, consistent and serious, innovative in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical sector, so that this methodology is studied and multiplied in the rest of the business system.
The presentation of the topic was in charge of the member of the CNI, Dr. C. Eduardo Martínez Díaz, member of the CNI and President of the BioCubaFarma business group, which brings together these entities, who summarized the work in this regard in more than 30 years of the sector, founded by Commander in Chief Fidel Castro Ruz. He referred, among other results, to the innovation in the health emergency imposed by the new coronavirus pandemic, which has allowed them to have a COVID-19 Folder composed of 27 products, 18 with authorization for emergency use and nine under development (22 in productive escalation).
The comments on the subject were made by members of the CNI, Dr. C. Vilma Hidalgo de los Santos (Director of the Foundation for Innovation and Development of the University of Havana) and Dr. C. Mercedes Delgado Fernández (Rector from the Higher School of State and Government Staff), who asserted that the main innovation of the group, regardless of the high specialization of this sector and the scientific results achieved, has been organizational. Her presentation included the results of 77 works by the main executives of the sector at ESCEG between 2012 and 2020 with the projection of 119 innovations, 44% of which are organizational. She also presented the case study from the Center for Molecular Immunology.
Dr. C. Agustín Lage Dávila agrees that «the essential thing in the interpretation of the“ phenomenon ”BioCubaFarma» is organizational innovation. The results of BioCubaFarma can then be replicated in other sectors of the economy, although now they must take into account the Fourth Industrial Revolution that is taking place in the world, explained Lage Dávila.
In the same sense, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy and Planning, Alejandro Gil Fernández, criticized that not all business systems in the country have a culture of innovation.
The fact that we recognize here that the science and innovation system that is applied in BioCubaFarma must be classified as the most successful, brings in itself a contradiction: why does this good example not exist in other sectors ?, asked the President of the Republic. "And this is something that the National Innovation Council has to solve," he said.