I en artikel i tidningen Economist senaste Technoplogy Quarterly, finns en artikel om möjligheten att använda OSS modellen för att drastiskt sänka utvecklingskostnaderna för nya mediciner.
Här är ett citat från Economist.com REPORTS: "Medicine: The open-source model is a good way to produce software, as the example of Linux shows. Could the same collaborative approach now revitalise medical research too?"
"Can goodwill, aggregated over the internet, produce good medicine? The current approach to drug discovery works up to a point, but it is far from perfect. It is costly to develop medicines and get regulatory approval. The patent system can foreclose new uses or enhancements by outside researchers. And there has to be a consumer willing (or able) to pay for the resulting drugs, in order to justify the cost of drug development. Pharmaceutical companies have little incentive to develop treatments for diseases that particularly afflict the poor, for example, since the people who need such treatments most may not be able to afford them.It is in this environment that a number of medical biologists, lawyers, entrepreneurs and health-care activists have sought improvements.
They have suggested borrowing the 'open-source' approach that has proven so successful in another area of technology, namely software development. This is a decentralised form of production in which the underlying programming instructions, or 'source code', for a given piece of software are made freely available. Anyone can look at it, modify it, or improve it, provided they agree to share their modifications under the same terms. Volunteers collaborating in this way over the internet have produced some impressive software: the best-known example is the Linux operating system. So why not apply the open-source model to drug development too?"
En möjlig väg att göra detta presenterades vid BIO 2004-konferensen av Dr Maurer, Rai och Sali med titeln "FINDING CURES FOR TROPICAL DISEASES: IS OPEN SOURCE AN ANSWER?"
"Computation plays an increasing role in biology.The convergence between computing and biology suggests that open source methods can be used to organize early phase drug discovery.We argue that a new approach, which we call “open source drug discovery,” would significantly reduce the cost of discovering, developing and manufacturing cures for tropical diseases. First, it would give hundreds of scientists a practical way to donate urgently needed manpower. Second, open sourcediscoveries would not be patented, permitting sponsors to award development contracts to the company that offered the lowest bid. Finally, competition from generic drug makers would keep manufacturing prices at or near the cost of production, significantly accelerating drug development for the 500 million people who currently suffer from tropical diseases."
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Flera internationella forskningsgrupper använder sig av ett liknande förfarande för att kunna dela på kunskap i tidiga skeden i utvecklingen. Doktor Lansbury vid Harvard Medical School leder en grupp som försöker hitta mediciner mot ALS, Huntington och Parkinson. De bedriver arbetet på ett sätt som ligger nära OSS, dvs. distribuerat kunskapssamarbete och öppen tillgång till data.
