Microsoft Pledge to Make IP Freely Available to Flight COVID-19
Microsoft is committed to the Open COVID Pledge to help fight COVID-19. According to target 3.8 UN, it is essential to achieve universal health coverage and access to safe, effective, quality, and affordable essential medicines and vaccines for all. Microsoft generated 46.4 billion U.S. dollars in its 2020 financial year. The impact of this AI program for Health is $60 million.
Coverage of essential health services includes infectious diseases and the most disadvantaged populations in the context of a pandemic of international scope, as of 10:05 am CET, 28 January 2021, there have been 100,200,107 confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 2,158,761 deaths, reported to WHO.
The Microsoft pledge and open licensing is helping to fight the onslaught of COVID-19 by making its patents available free of charge while mobilizing AI for health. This is also helping to reach the goal of providing access to affordable essential medicines, technologies, and vaccines for all.
Open licensing pledges are fundamental in order to spur research and development worldwide so that scientists can deliver fast. This will contribute to preventing the spread of COVID-19 and maintaining health care systems through more innovation so that IP does not become a barrier in this pandemic. Microsoft should also join C-TAP Technology Access Pool (C-TAP), which was first proposed in March by Costa Rica, who joined World Health Organization’s (WHO).
Microsoft's pledge of making IP freely available is essential in the fight against Sars-CoV-2 and to achieve universal health coverage. However, Microsoft could do a lot more and invest even more than the current 0.1 percent of its annual revenue (2020). If Microsoft wants to have a bigger and more effective impact on data analysis, the skills of data scientists, and scientific research for equitable access, it should support technology access pools and open license mechanisms such as C-TAP.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/273482/segment-revenue-of-microsoft/
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/ai/ai-for-health
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6qy3N-ZVqw https://opencovidpledge.org/partner-ip/ https://www.who.int/news-room/events/detail/2021/02/16/default-calendar/who-covid-19-technology-access-pool-(c-tap)-civil-society-consultation https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/transcripts/who-audio-emergencies-coronavirus-press-conference-full-29may2020.pdf?sfvrsn=2ee19858_2