Strategy to promote research and innovation in the pharmaceutical sector through interdisciplinary education

Abstract

Health products and services innovation have a strong economic and social impact, particularly by a BRICS member such as Brazil, considered the 6th largest consumer market for pharmaceutical products. Among the many national strategies to address the vulnerability of the country in this aspect, it is the training of the pharmacist one of the key players in the innovation process. In 2017 Generalist Pharmacy Curriculum Guide was published, which includes innovation, entrepreneurship and interdisciplinarity for the first time as components of the Brazilian pharmacist training. The present study analyzed 3742 disciplines currently offered by 42 universities, taking as a parameter the requirements induced by the new curriculum guideline. The method used was the content analysis, supported by NVivo® software, which generated 113 categories of disciplines, distributed in 8 core areas and 9 areas of knowledge. The result showed there is insufficiency related to health care and health management core areas as well as hours of internship, while there is predominance of health technology (> 75%) with only 2% of innovation besides inexpressive presence of entrepreneurship and interdisciplinarity. The study demonstrates that paradigmatic and substantial changes must be made by Universities in order to comply with the new Curriculum Guide and proposes strategic solutions to promote innovation from an interdisciplinary perspective.