The rise of India and China as economic powerhouses, the development of new global communication technologies, global warming, the emergence of infectious pathogens like SARS, powerful new insights into the workings of the human body - all are creating tremendous challenges and opportunities. No country is immune from these global tectonic shifts; we are in a race without a finish line.
The 20th century was characterized by remarkable improvements in health, virtually everywhere except sub-Saharan Africa. Longevity in the West has increased by almost two years every decade for the past 16 decades. Drugs and diagnostic technologies are increasingly based on a detailed molecular understanding of human biology and disease. Some diseases can be prevented or slowed before clinical symptoms are even apparent.
As our population ages, and as we move increasingly from acute diseases to the chronic conditions of aging (dementias, diabetes, arthritis, frailty), vital information and communication technologies (ICTs) will link together our homes, our bodies, our clinics and our hospitals. Regenerative medicine, including nanotechnology, bioengineering, perhaps stem cells, will transform how we repair or replace defective or worn body parts.
Most profoundly, the synergy that comes from combining this new science and new technology, and a heightened sensitivity to personal responsibility for our own bodies, will transform human health and our health system.
This profound transformation of health care into a knowledge-based activity has huge economic implications: In Canada, health care is a $140-billion industry; in the U.S., $2-trillion.
Canada, despite our concerns, has arguably one of the world's best and most well-run health systems. That knowledge is as exportable and profitable as lumber or oil.
Health care, Canada's largest knowledge industry, will experience phenomenal growth and export opportunities over the next 25 years. It is a model for how we should structure our thinking about science and technology (S&T).
We must rethink our view of productivity and competitiveness. Productivity today is not about lowering the unit costs of manufacturing picture-tube TVs, it's about inventing better flat-screen technologies. Productivity today is not about lowering the unit production costs of bovine insulin; it's about recombinant DNA technology to produce human insulin in bacteria.
Productivity is about the invention and system-wide application of ideas and technologies that will speed up and improve health delivery.
The process of discovery is, itself, transforming the nature of competition. In a resource-based economy, scarcity drives up price. In a knowledge economy, the opposite applies - for example, software's value goes up the more it is shared.
Unlike oil or capital equipment, knowledge isn't used up, worn out or consumed. The more you use knowledge and new ideas, the more valuable they become.
Often, ideas or intellectual properties generated in one company or one university acquire value only when combined with those from another company or university. Companies, universities and countries must therefore collaborate: Synergies and complementarities can only come by merging ideas, creating partnerships and building relationships. Canada is well-positioned to take leadership in this area. Health-science diplomacy will be a powerful way for Canada to reach out to the world.
We place importance on good health and a good public-health system. Those values, coupled with Canada's exceptionally strong health-research enterprise and the universal nature of science, which transcends language and culture, will make health-science diplomacy as important a tool in this century as Pearsonian diplomacy was in the one past. For our cities to become a knowledge-based hub, proximity to market is no longer the issue. Proximity to the world's best universities and its best research talent is: We are witnessing the death of distance.
A successful knowledge economy is built on a highly educated work force and a society that is excited about science and understands what research is all about. Science is, quite simply, the best way humanity has devised to solve important problems. Some of the greatest opportunities for economic progress will come from helping the world solve its biggest problems - in human health, energy, the environment, in building sustainable cites. This is how new jobs and wealth will be generated, and well-being for our citizens.
Real, cutting-edge research is tough to do. Transforming science into new products and new policies is tougher still.
Canada is in a race it can win to build a nation that provides rewarding careers for our children, has a sustainable health system and a strong education system. That means a race to generate new ideas and transform them into economic advantage.
How do you win a race without a finish line? First, you have to enter the race. Second, you have to enter it to win.
Alan Bernstein is President of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research
