Costa Rica creates a fund for scientific research and innovation in health – Science

The Foundation’s Board of Directors made it clear that it has laid the foundations to advance new knowledge focused on solutions by approving a fund to conduct high-level scientific studies.

The process will be gradual, starting this year and in the next three, the fund will allocate 1,000 million colones (about $1.5 million) as part of the budget until the set threshold of $4.6 million is reached.

This special fund, which cannot be bypassed, will be reserved in every budget for research and innovation as long as this resource allocation never means less direct user services.

CCSS CEO Roman Macaya emphasized that creativity and new knowledge are necessary to improve and research new resources, such as creating patents for effective products or treatments, as well as participating in part of the investigation. Later get medicines at lower cost.

“The path to the sustainability of the fund in an aging country, where we will have fewer ration resources and more complex, high-cost care, is to use human talent to reinvent the way we work and ensure the provision of health services,” Macaya said.

The authority added that this injection of resources represents an institutional milestone with the aim of promoting the development of a culture of knowledge.

“Research and innovation turn out to be a commitment to the future rather than an option in the context of a demographic transition,” Mackaya explained.

For his part, CCSS Director General Roberto Cervantes added that “the innovation and sought-after research are connected to the everyday world of the fund to solve problems, design solutions and assess whether or not we have done something well.”

The special resources will form part of what will be known as the “Fund for the Development of Research and Strategic Innovation” (FEDII) and will be managed by the Center for Strategic Development and Information on Health and Social Security.

The proposal arose after the pandemic forced the Costa Rican Social Security Fund to encourage research, due to the need to treat the disease while learning about it. This generated an openness to the knowledge that was created to strengthen management.

In conjunction with other institutions, CCSS has developed a study of equine serum as a treatment and a study of the population’s immune response to the coronavirus.