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Medvedev calls for coordination of medical research development institutions

Nowadays, financing is made from various directions, he explained

SKOLKOVO, September 18 (Itar-Tass) —— Russia’s Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev calls for coordinated work of development institutions in the sphere of financing medical research.

“All instruments and mechanisms should make a unified management system, and I hope this would happen,” he told a meeting on innovation development of medicine on Tuesday. “In order to comply with modern innovation standards, we should develop the infrastructures, modern laboratories, research and information centres.”

Nowadays, financing is made from various directions, he explained.

“The government is investing big money into this system – in the framework of several federal special programmes. For these purposes, in 2011-2012 we have allocated ten billion budget roubles, the Healthcare Ministry allocated 26 billion roubles for scientific research in its universities,” the prime minister said.

“Besides, following the Commission on modernisation, we are implementing most promising five projects in medical equipment, where financing is about nine billion roubles,” Medvedev added. Another three billion roubles were allocated in 2010-2012 to universities.

“We have a good start in bio medicine – a bio medical cluster at Skolkovo has been formed, and it features 156 participants, where 28 participants received grants worth 1.5 billion roubles.”

The prime minister stressed quite a lot would depend on financial institutions, including VEB, RVC and others.

“The financing is quite substantial already, but the activities of development institutions are not coordinated and sometimes duplicate each other,” Medvedev said. “There are things to be improved here.”

RVC is the state-run fund of funds and the Russian Federation’s development institution, the government’s key instrument in establishment of the national innovation system.