RESEARCH, INNOVATION AND COMMERCIALIZATION IN REHABILITATION PAKISTAN

Dr. Zulfiqar Ali Umrani[i]

DOI: 10.36283/pjr.zu.11.2/001

The ORIC Ziauddin University ensures that the quality of research meets international standards and ethics. The world is spinning around the data which leads to the strategies and ideas to be developed for genuine needs and development. Rehabilitation 2030 has targeted to reach out to the unmet need for rehabilitation in the health care system through building research capacity and promoting sturdy pieces of evidence for rehabilitation. Many research journals with the definite scope of rehabilitation has come into existence that involve the six domains of rehab sciences that is physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech and language therapy, orthotics and prosthetics, clinical psychology, vocational therapy . To meet the need of population the evidences are still very rare that emphasize the integration of rehabilitation in the health care system for the quality care.

The Higher education commission Pakistan has accentuated on research, innovation and commercialization (RIC) as an integral part of all universities to develop research, promote innovation and provide accessible services through commercialization that meet population need. RIC is the link between the academic laboratories and evidence based practice, ideas and inventions and research and industry. It is very crucial for rehabilitation students and practitioner to understand the role of RIC in order to reach out the end user, stakeholders and industry for not only the quality service but for the accessible facility in the health care system. The collaborative efforts of RIC will lead the rehabilitation sciences to the bench mark practices and accelerate the process of development by intensifying the scientific research, data building and innovation in the rehab field for the delivery of the services.

The purpose of any RIC department in university is beyond the collaboration, it manages the research related projects, funding, assisting in development of the policies for the academic, social and financial goals pertaining to the wellness of community. The focal point for all the research related activities is RIC in any standard university since it provides the networking for the researcher to the financier, stakeholders to the inventors and the user with inventions.

Besides the networking, expansion of research and promotion of innovations, RIC is also responsible of quality of research that it encompasses genuine data and based on the contemporary issues and provide authentic, non-bias conclusion. RIC endorses research culture at educational institutes which influences the future students thought process as well as faculty development through continued education and research development.

RIC is accountable for the transformation of idea into an innovation based on evidences that are genuine and in the benefit of community; this process of transformation involves academia, government and other stake holders. RIC at the same time also become one of the major promoter of entrepreneurship in the business community, Higher education Commission Pakistan in 2010 channelize the university researches to promote solutions for the local issues, discover and exchange world-wide opportunities. It defines the RIC role to provide secured funding, produce financial gains from research commercialization and ultimately providing opportunities of jobs.

Rehabilitation sciences is an emerging field in Pakistan, there is the major need of conducting research to collect the big data to explore the utilization of rehabilitation services in health care system in Pakistan. RIC is the facilitator for production of rehab intellectual property which is quite scarce as well as the designing of assistive technology, intervention tools and methods for preventive care. The rehab professionals must seek out the ORIC at their respective universities to highlight their role in the quality care delivery, staining sustainable developmental goals for the health and wellness of the nation.

The Ziauddin University is on the list of I4OA (https://i4oa.org/) & I4OC (https://i4oc.org/).
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Conflict of Interest: The author (s) have no conflict.

 

[i] Ph.D. (Mat. Sci.), MS, BE, Director (ORIC) Ziauddin University, Karachi, Pakistan. ORCID ID: 0000-0002-8934-965X