WIsH - Welsh Innovations in Healthcare
Know-how
Know-how is information that may not be protected by other intellectual property rights but is of value. The information should be of a confidential nature and may be defined as information which is secret and valuable. Examples of know-how include specialist information required to develop/ run software or the knowledge required to design/ improve a medical device to achieve greater clinical benefit. Know-how can be generated over time and is often related to the expertise required to carry out everyday activities within the NHS (e.g. treating patients, using specialist equipment). Companies / external organisations will often employ an expert / consultant in order to ‘buy in’ know-how to develop and market products for use in health care.
Know-how is difficult to precisely define and therefore can be difficult to value. However many innovations progressed in the NHS have been developed through the transfer of know-how without any other associated intellectual property right.
Protecting Know-how
Know-how is protected by the law of confidence and by written agreement.
When know-how is disclosed, it is advisable to do this under the protection of a Confidential Disclosure Agreement (CDA) sometimes called a Confidentiality Agreement or a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA).
A CDA, defining the know-how which is to be disclosed, is signed by an authorised signatory on behalf of all the organisations involved.
The CDA can cover information disclosed by one or all of the parties e.g. where an NHS Trust has know-how relating to clinical expertise and a company has know-how relating to the design or marketing of a product.
The agreement should be signed before any information is disclosed. This protects the confidentiality and ownership of the know-how so that the other party cannot use this valuable information without the permission of the discloser or without any benefit to the discloser.
Exploiting Know-How
Like other forms of intellectual property, know-how can be licensed (leased) to others under a licence agreement. This allows the owner of the know-how to control the way the information is used or to limit the use of it to a specific field or area of research. This can be useful where know-how can be applied to a number of fields e.g. the use of imaging technology for medical diagnostics and for security applications.