The Issues and Rules in Public-Private Partnership for Vaccines Innovation

The unique nature of vaccination research, development and production has created a situation where there is a lack of investment incentives for vaccines among pharmaceutical producers. There is greater concern that in the event that a pandemic breaks out, it will be impossible obtain vaccination supplies from abroad. In order to raise the level of investments made by pharmaceutical companies in vaccinations, or establish domestic self-sufficiency in vaccination R&D capabilities, the government must make use of policy to intervene in this innovative market and compensate for market inefficiencies. In recent years, the public-private partnership model, which has been used in the promotion of vaccination production, has become the basic arrangement for policy in industrial nations. This set up reduces the inherent high-level risks associated with innovative vaccination research. In Taiwan under a cooperation framework between the National Health Research Institutes (governmental institution) and ADIMMUNE (government investment) a vaccination innovation system has been established in order to improve our own vaccine production capabilities. With respect to innovative public governance, whether an exclusive cooperation model or competitive model is adopted, the question of how to use a systematization of norms which will ensure goals of innovation promotion are met while simultaneously keeping checks on the responsibility of vaccine safety is key to establishing a standard for examining the model’s jurisprudence. For this reason, this project will conduct a thorough investigation of these questions. According to the comparative method of legal study, this research will provide the ruling reference to the government when it plays the role as a initiator to promote vaccine industry. Furthermore, this project will point out specific problems of the vaccine policy in the industry, propose solution, thereby establish the accountability on vaccine development policy.