Perfil de investimentos públicos em pesquisa e desenvolvimento e o cenário da inovação em saúde no Brasil

Abstract

The first undertakings of the Brazilian Government to support scientific and technological activities took place in 1950’s. Since then, there’s a constant movement towards consolidating the National Innovation System (NIS) in Brazil. Currently, the country occupies the 9th position in the world’s economy and shows up at the same position on the research and development (R&D) investment ranking. However, it only occupies the 66th position on the Global Innovation Index, which is an international indicator that evaluates innovation performance of 129 countries worldwide. Nonetheless, about half of all of Brazil’s innovation investment comes from public resources, being Federal Government the main source. There isn’t, however, a clear definition of where and how those resources are being employed, neither how they have been contributing to NIS’s evolution. In health, since 1980, worry about decision-making based on scientific evidence has been increasing. That makes research and technical-scientific knowledge distribution and generation of great relevance to make public health politics. Considering federal public investments impact on innovation financing in Brazil, a financial survey was elaborated based on the last 10 years, within the period of 2010-2019, using Federal Budget statements. Afterwards, a profile of those investments was developed, classifying them into five groups: Constructions, Research, Knowledge Distribution, Technological Development and Service Provision/Others. As a result, it was verified that almost R$ 162 billion were allocated on scientific-technological development, sourced from federal resources declared to scientific-technological development and research and innovation for the past 10 years in Brazil. That translates to a R$ 16 billion/year average. From that total amount, about 3 billion/year were destined to health, being only 14% of this resource directly employed on scientific-technological R&D (12% if considered just research). On the other hand, Brazil advances rapidly in regards to scientific knowledge, showing that knowledge generation isn’t a deficiency, but rather how this knowledge returns to population and the country’s economy with value.