We are proud to have supported World Intellectual Property Day 2023 at InnoScot Health, with the annual event celebrating the ‘can do’ attitude of female innovators, creators, and entrepreneurs around the world on April 26th.
The day champions the role which intellectual property rights (patents, trademarks, industrial designs, copyright) play in encouraging innovation and creativity, while empowering entrepreneurs by protecting their ideas.
This year, World Intellectual Property Day focused on the ground-breaking work of women in all regions who are shaping the world through their imagination, ingenuity, and determination.
The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) says that “for generations, women have shaped our world with their ingenuity and creativity.”
Earlier this week, it explored how creative female minds are driving positive change and using intellectual property rights to achieve their goals, generate income, create jobs, tackle local and global challenges, and support community and national development.
However, WIPO acknowledges that female innovators still “often face significant challenges in accessing the knowledge, skills, resources and support they need to thrive.”
It also believes that “too few women are participating in the intellectual property (IP) system,” and “when women lose out, we all lose out.”
At InnoScot we are keen to see the same mindset inspire NHS Scotland in the belief that there really should be no barriers to innovation – whether gender, age, location, or role in health and social care – and everyone should be encouraged to come up with new ideas, simple or complex, to drive improvements in healthcare.
Without ownership over the IP of what has been created or invented, anyone, regardless of permission, can use and adapt that idea without adequately compensating the inventor(s). Protecting IP is therefore crucial to ideas originating from NHS Scotland. It secures the interests of both the health professional/inventor, and the health board.
It is also one of the key services which our organisation offers to health boards across Scotland, ensuring the NHS is protected in commercial negotiations, with skilled, experienced individuals able to advise and provide support throughout this process.
Over the past 20 years, InnoScot Health has protected the intellectual property, trademark, copyright and design rights of over 250 NHS inventions.
Against the backdrop of NHS Scotland recovery aims, this strong framework will continue to support the NHS as it adapts, evolves, and accelerates the development of the leading healthcare innovations of tomorrow.
Effective IP is nothing less than a key for unlocking the true potential of innovation, both now as we continue to focus on the NHS recovery process, and in the future.
Incredible knowledge and talent predominates within NHS Scotland and we need to increasingly tap into that. Coupled with the expertise within InnoScot Health, the workforce’s truly ground-breaking ideas can be fully harnessed and catalysed.
