Concerns about copyright on medical health test

Last year the authors of the cognitive screening tool called Mini-State Examination (MMSE) invoked their copyrights to block the creation of a new and similar cognitive screening tool ‘Sweet Sixteen’, developed by Harvard’s Tamara Fong. Since 2000, the authors began taking steps to enforce their copyrights on the MMSE. Commentators have expressed their concerns about this ‘lockdown’ and the implications for the developing world.

Marshal Folstein, Susan Folstein, and Paul McHugh have developed the MMSE in 1975. The MMSE is a 30-item mental health-screening test. For many years this test was distributed in textbooks, pocket guides and websites. Doctors used the MMSE as first-line check on whether a patient has mental health issues. Now a licensed version of the MMSE can be purchased for $1,23 per test. Gradually the MMSE is disappearing from textbooks, websites and clinical tool kits.

Authors Newman and Feldman worry this battle over the health-screening test may be a harbinger of more to come. “Many clinical tools we take for granted, such as the Katz Index of Independence in Activities of Daily Living, fall into the same “benign neglect” copyright category as the MMSE did before 2000. At any time, they might be pulled back behind a wall of active copyright enforcement by the authors or their heirs”, stated Newman and Feldman. They suggest that authors of widely used clinical tools provide explicit permissive licensing, ideally with a form of copyleft.This system guarantees the right of anyone to use, modify, copy, and distribute a work, as long as it, and any derivatives, remain under the license. The authors will retain the copyright. Copyleft would encourage innovation and access while protecting author’s rights, according to Newman and Feldman.

References:The Washington Post, New England Journal of Medicine

By: Deniece Teterissa