Can socially responsible licensing enhance worldwide access to medical products?

How can we increase access and affordability of health products in low- and middle-income countries, when research for those products was done with public funding at Dutch universities? Could socially responsible licensing be the solution? On 11 June 2025, the Ministry of Health organized a discussion about these questions, hosted by the Global Health Hub Nederland.

Roland Driece, Director of International Affairs at the Ministry of Health Jasper Claessen, policy coordinator for medicines and licensing, gave the opening remarks. They emphasized the strategic relevance of socially responsible licensing in the ambitions set in the Dutch Global Health Strategy.

Some inspiring presentations followed:

• Carmen Correa (Erasmus MC /NFU) introduced the Dutch SRL toolkit and its scope, as well as difficulties universities encounter in integrating SRL clauses in contracts.
• Kai Figueras (UAEM) showed the best practices that Dutch universities can adopt to implement social responsible licensing.
• Adrew Goldman (advisor at the Medicines Patent Pool) presented the Affordable Access plan of the Medicines Patent Pool. It provides sample clauses that universities can integrate in contracts to facilitate licensing procedures with low- and middle-income countries.
• Ella Weggen (Wemos) presented the historical and political context of SRL in the Netherlands and elaborated on the need to adopt access and affordability language into the toolkit. She also shared practical strategies for implementation and awareness raising at universities that are currently undertaking interesting research.

The rich and interactive discussion led to the following conclusions:

• Some participants encouraged the NFU to continue exploring how provision on access and affordability, such as from the Affordable Access Plan of the Medicines Patent Pool , could be integrated into the SRL toolkit
• Participants want universities to integrate these clauses as standard practice in their contractual agreements where possible
• Universities’ position to negotiate SRL with companies depends on a variety of factors, including maturity stage of the innovation and the sum of public funding in the research.
• Some small and medium enterprises want to avoid SRL language in contracts as they hope to maximize profitability so larger enterprises will be interested in buying them in the future.
• Licensing agreements are tailor-made for each situation and invention; a negotiation based on mutual benefit and capacities is crucial to ensure successful implementation of SRL clauses in contracts.
• Government budget cuts for education and research put pressure on universities to seek private research financing, which has effects on their negotiation positions.

We were happy to dive into this subject and engage in this fruitful exchange of perspectives.