This workshop will focus on the importance of community health services and primary health care reform in China and discuss what clinicians and policymakers are doing to improve health outcomes. With researchers and clinicians from China and the US, we will discuss the policy challenges to improving China’s health care system at the community and grassroots level. Key themes include China’s local experiences, showcasing innovations in Hangzhou, as well as the question of how the private sector might play a role in strengthening community health in China. The Asia Health Policy Program thanks ACON Biotechnology for sponsoring this event.

http://aparc.fsi.stanford.edu/research/innovations-primary-care

In this session of the Shorenstein APARC Corporate Affiliate Visiting Fellows Research Presentations, the following will be presented:

Jaigeun Lim, Seoul Metropolitan Government, "A Study on the Influential Factors on Inbound Foreign Direct Investment and its Implications"

The global importance of Inbound Foreign Direct Investment (IFDI) continues to grow and each nation has made an effort to enhance its national competitiveness through IFDI.  Lim’s research targets 51 nations and 14  candidate variables to learn which factors have an influence on IFDI.

Statistically meaningful variables on IFDI include GDP, economic growth rate, dependency to trade, management of cities, small and medium-sized enterprises’ efficiency and investment incentive policy.  Particularly, the results from Outbound Foreign Direct Investment (OFDI)-oriented nations give evidence that influences of GDP, small and medium-sized enterprises’ efficiency and investment incentive policy are positive to IFDI.  However, Korea shows the lower level of performances in small and medium-sized enterprises’ efficiency and investment incentive policy.  Korea has also shown the lower performances in similar variables compared with other Asia-Pacific nations.  Lim’s research aims to find out what these results mean in terms of policy for Korea?

Ryuichi Ohta, Japan Patent Office, "Relationship Between Technical Standard and Patents"

Samsung and Apple have more than 50 cases of appeals to the courts against each other in more than 10 countries.  In these court battles, Samsung asserted injunction using essential patent which is related to telecommunication standards and committed RAND (Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory) commitment.  Injunction is one of the basic rights for patent, which means Samsung can assert this right.  However in this case, can Samsung assert injunction in spite of RAND commitment?  In normal circumstances, standard organizations require RAND licensing obligations for essential patents.  Ohta will address the question "Why do they require it and why do they consider these obligations are reasonable for essential patents?" through case studies.

Rajeev Prasad, Reliance Life Sciences, "Concept of Total Quality Management in Pharmaceutical Industries"

The pharmaceutical industry is profoundly regulated and the reasons are obvious;  the use of ineffective, poor quality, harmful medicines can result in therapeutic failure, exacerbation of disease, and resistance of medicines and sometimes death of the patients.  Also, the mistakes in product design or production can have severe, even fatal, consequences for patients which sometimes lead to recall of drugs from the market.  Total Quality Management (TQM) acts as an umbrella under which everyone in the organization can strive for customer satisfaction by producing better quality of product, reduce cost and wastage and increase the efficiency of services.  In his research, Rajeev has focused on the failures of TQM principles by evaluating the warning letters, case studies of pharmaceutical manufacturers and product recalls and also outlined about the implementation of robust quality management system by amalgamation of principles of TQM and pharmaceutical regulatory guidelines.

This is a time at which the global movement for universal health coverage (UHC) is under intense review.  As an isolated country which recently opened up to the world, Myanmar has endorsed the goal of achieving UHC by 2030. However, current evidence has shown that there will be significant challenges for Myanmar to achieve this target.  The Myanmar health system comprises a pluralistic mix of public and private systems both in financing and provision. It was ranked the second worst in terms of ‘overall health system performance’ by the WHO in 2000. According to World Bank (2012), the country’s out-of-pocket payment burden is one of the highest in the world, at 81% of total health expenditures, resulting in high levels of catastrophic health expenditure. About three-quarters of Myanmar’s citizens, including the poorest and most marginalized communities, find themselves with very limited access to essential health services. And too many of these same populations suffer a further burden of being pushed, or kept, in poverty because they have to pay for their health care. Recognizing the fragility of its health system, Myanmar launched some transformations in the health sector in 2011. The most significant changes were increasing the health budget four-fold since 2011, launching some health insurance programs in some areas, starting to collaborate with a diversity of actors in the health sector, and major structural changes in the Ministry of Health, Myanmar. This colloquium will reflect upon these transformations and discuss how the changes will shape Myanmar’s future health system, drawing upon comparisons with health reforms in other South East Asian countries.

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After receiving her MBBS degree from the University of Medicine (Mandalay), Phyu Phyu worked for two years at a public hospital. In 2009, she became an active researcher at the Department of Medical Research (Upper Myanmar). As a researcher, she participated in various clinical and public health researches and presented papers at national and international conferences. She was also actively involved in the welfare of underprivileged groups in Myanmar. She earned her PhD in Epidemiology from the Prince of Songkla University, Thailand in 2013. After her PhD, she continued her work at DMR (Upper Myanmar) as a research officer as well as a member of the secretariat of the Academic Committee. She was also as a field supervisor in two national surveys on HIV and RH commodities and services in Myanmar. She has also published journal articles on equity, gender differences and RH services utilization among the poor.

At APARC, Phyu Phyu will study the current trends of Myanmar health policies in general, as well as the specific sex education programs of the country. She will investigate how Myanmar/Burmese culture affects the objectives of the current sex education programs at schools based on the perceptions of adolescent students, teachers and parents.