The pandemic has pushed more Filipinos to churn out innovations in science and technology as means of adapting in the challenging environment, Department of Science and Technology (DOST) Secretary Fortunato de la Pena said on Tuesday, Nov. 17.
“These are really a wealth of innovations that has been triggered by this pandemic,” he said during the virtual signing of the memorandum of agreement (MOA) on the SciTech SuperHighway Program.
With this, Because of this, de la Pena has called the MOA as timely and historic since the SciTech SuperHighway Program is aimed to speed up and improve intellectual property registration of DOST-supported research and innovations.
The MOA was signed by de la Pena, Department of Trade Industry (DTI) Sec. Ramon Lopez and Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (IPOPHL) Dir. Gen. Rowel Barba.
“I think this particular agreement will really pave the way for the registration of more and more intellectual property in IPO and this is really going to attract many researchers, many inventors, many investors, many markets if we have a strong IP system,” said de la Pena during the online event.
The secretary pointed out the pandemic has not stopped Filipinos from coming up with innovations in the field of science and technology.
“We are really living in a very challenging environment. This pandemic has really challenged everybody,” he admitted.
“In spite of all the limitations, of all the challenges and all the problems that we have to address, there has been a surge in innovations, not only in terms of the R and D (research and development) that we have to repurpose, to re-prioritize, to address the issues of the pandemic,” de la Pena said.
The secretary cited that innovations are being generated not only from researchers but also from “the enterprises themselves to have become researchers and scientists also because they have to think of innovative ways to survive
“And also from our young start-up groups who came up with all kinds of innovations from bio-medical devices to apps that can be used to even smart ways of producing and moving goods,” he also cited.
With the SuperHighway Program in place, de la Pena expressed hope that the Philippines will be able to move up the Global Innovation Index within the 30 percentile range by 2022.
“We all know that in any country the statistics in IP is always a very important component in assessing rankings,” de la Pena said.
“So this is really my dream of really going up in the rankings like the Global Innovation Index by way of IP registrations,” he bared.
He recounted that the Philippines was in the 58 percentile of the Global Innovation Index back in 2018 and then moved within the 42 percentile range in 2019.
“Today out of 131 [countries], we are in the top 38 percentile,” the secretary boasted.
This content was originally published here.