This project was conceived, developed and produced by Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (UAEM), an international nonprofit organization of graduate and undergraduate students in medicine, research, law, and related fields. Students from a wide range of Canadian institutions, including many of those evaluated by the Report Card, contributed to the project. The dataset used to produce this Canadian iteration primarily targeted over the “past two calendar years” (January 1, 2019, to December 31, 2020).

The UAEM 2023 Report Card Team:

Max Crosby

 

Currently an undergraduate student at McGill University, Max has led the 2023 Canadian Report Card since the project was restarted in Fall of 2020. Max has focused on the intersection of university biomedical R&D policy with regard to access to medicines with his work in UAEM. Max is currently a member of UAEM McGill and previously interned for UAEM.

 

Celine Huang

 

 

Celine is currently in her second year at McGill University, pursuing a bachelor’s degree in cognitive science. She first got involved with the report card in January 2022 during the data collection period and continued to work on the Report Card through a UAEM internship and at UAEM McGill. Since then, her work on the report card has primarily been focused on writing the 2023 Canadian Report Card White Paper.

As detailed in the methodology, this evaluation is based on a combination of metrics derived from a.) publicly-available information, and b.) self-reported data from evaluated institutions.

To promote fair evaluation and methodological rigor, we used standardized, authoritative, publicly accessible data sources for as many metrics as possible. Self-reported data was only sought on metrics for which public information was limited or inconsistent. In cases of conflict between university self-reported and publicly-available sources, university self-reported responses were used. 

The most significant sources of publicly-available data used in this evaluation are:

• • • • Canadian Institutes of Health Research – Funding Decisions Data
      • AllTrials/EBM DataLab – TrialsTracker
      • G-FINDER (Global Funding of Innovation for Neglected Diseases) Public Search Tool

1. 1. • List of signatories to the Statement of Principles and Strategies for the Equitable Dissemination of Medical Technologies
      • List of signatories to the Nine Points to Consider in Licensing University Technology
      • List of signatories to the Open COVID Pledge
      • University websites, technology transfer office websites
      • PubMed and PubMed Central

We chose to use PubMed as it is a comprehensive resource that is commonly used by researchers in the health field, together with its ease of use and features which allow us to easily download large amounts of data. Using more than one publication database would have meant duplication of work and greater room for error. Comparing publication sets between PubMed and PubMed Central allowed us to easily analyse how much of a university’s health related research output is freely available online.

For the Access, Innovation, Empowerment, Transparency, and COVID-19 sections, an online questionnaire was developed with Alchemar and e-mailed to Technology Transfer Office (TTO) officials, Administrators, Faculty, and Staff best suited to provide the data. TTOs were contacted a minimum of 3 times by email and twice by telephone over a 6-month period beginning March 7th, 2022.

For the purposes of this iteration of the UAEM Report Card, “neglected diseases” (NDs) are defined as diseases that disproportionately affect low- and middle-income countries. Our list of NDs and Emerging Infectious DIsease research areas was based on the criteria set by the GFINDER 2014 survey on global neglected disease innovation funding and the World Health Organization’s list of recognized neglected tropical diseases. The scope of the research areas included was further focused in adding terms of subject matter and application. These neglected diseases and emerging infectious diseases are aligned in that they disproportionately affect those in LMICs and have a lack of affordably and accessible therapeutics and treatments.

Notably, this definition of ND includes Ebola, Zika, Antimicrobial resistance, AIDS, HIV, tuberculosis, malaria, diarrheal diseases, meningitis, and pneumonia; however, for several of the diseases there are substantial restrictions to include only aspects or subsets of these diseases that are truly neglected. For example, we did not include all research on HIV, only research pertaining to pediatric HIV, HIV diagnosis, diagnostics, microbicides, and vaccines.

In regard to “Alternative Research and Development (R&D)”, our working definition for this iteration of the UAEM Report Card is derived specifically from the inclusion criteria developed and used in the UAEM Re:Route Report. Alternative biomedical research initiatives must apply de-linkage plus one or more of the following innovative mechanisms:

• a pull mechanism
• a push mechanism
• pooled funding and/or an IP pooling mechanism
• broad collaboration
• open approaches to R&D (open source, open data sharing, open innovation)