The development of China's medical biotech industry needs to be driven by innovation

The Chinese biotech industry is going through a period of fast growth, and with its huge population, China is predicted to be the biggest single-country market in the world. However, the Chinese biotech industry has to tackle the critical issue of innovation, which should be the driving force for China's development into an advanced and responsible country. Here, in this article, the authors review the history of the Chinese biotech industry, exemplified by the development of genetically engineered drugs during the last 20 years, and also point out its the future.

Biotechnology in South Africa

Since adopting the National Biotechnology Strategy in 2001, the South African government has established several regional innovation centres and has put in place initiatives to encourage international partnerships that can spur internal development of life science ventures. This strategy seeks to capitalize on the high quality of research carried out in public research institutions and universities but is hampered, somewhat, by the lack of entrepreneurial culture among South African researchers due to, among other reasons, the expenses involved in registering foreign patents. Although private sector development is still relatively embryonic, start-ups are spinning out of universities and pre-existing companies. These represent a vital source of innovations for commercialization in the future, provided that the challenges facing the emerging South African biotechnology industry can be overcome.

Implications of social enterprise for community nursing

Scott McAusland outlines the key points of the Queen's Nursing Institute briefing paper Social Enterprise and argues that many clinicians need to develop business and financial skills to take up social enterprise opportunities.

Employee innovation behaviour in health care: the influence from management and colleagues

AIM

This article reports how 'important others' and position in the organizational hierarchy relate to employee innovation behaviour. Empowerment of healthcare workers to engage in innovation behaviour is desired by management in Norwegian municipalities as it is regarded as a way of getting more health care for less money. Innovation behaviour is also desired by nurses' and other healthcare workers' professional organizations of as it is regarded as a way of improving the working conditions of the healthcare worker.

BACKGROUND

The theoretical discussion in this paper includes corporate entrepreneurship, 'important others' and employee innovation behaviour.

METHODS

This article reports on a study concerning empowerment of nurses and other healthcare workers (n = 555) in Norwegian municipalities. The statistical methods used include multiple regressions.

FINDINGS

The study reveals that there were differences between the nurse (registered nurses), auxiliary nurses (nurse aides) and unskilled healthcare workers concerning how they perceived the opinion of the management and the opinion of the colleagues about how suitable it was to present innovation behaviour at the workplace. Moreover, the different groups of healthcare workers assign different levels of importance to this influence.

CONCLUSIONS

It is suggested that the findings put forward in this article may lead to an improved understanding of the dynamics behind employee innovation behaviour, and that such knowledge could improve the care provided to the patients, the cost of the care and the working conditions of nurses and other healthcare workers.

Order will come out of chaos

Events in primary care over last 6 months have well and truly broken the mould of the ‘see it, do it’ approach to policy implementation.