HSE University at SPIEF: Innovations, BRICS, and Healthcare

© Andrey Sidorov

The St Petersburg International Economic Forum took place on June 18-21, 2025. HSE experts have discussed cooperation between universities, investors, and technology companies in the development of innovations, sharing the best practices in healthcare and drug safety, as well as charity and humanitarian collaboration in the BRICS countries. As a result, several cooperation agreements have been signed during the forum.

Universities and Business: How to Create Innovations

Irina Martusevich, HSE University Vice Rector, spoke at the SPIEF-2025 session ‘The Power of Partnership: How Collaboration between Universities, Investors, and Tech Companies Drives Innovation.’ The participants discussed the transformation of the role of universities in the perception of the business community.

Amid growing interest from government bodies and commercial companies in the development of projects with deep engineering and scientific engagement, universities are increasingly strengthening their role as source of new technologies and developments, as they have an opportunity to conduct interdisciplinary scientific research and have access to scientific and intellectual capital. In such circumstances, there is a growing number of projects where universities, technology and investment companies act as partners and work together to create investment and business development architecture that meets the most difficult challenges and develop advanced technologies of global importance.

Irina Martusevich

© Artyom Pryakhin / Roscongress Foundation

In her speech, Irina Martusevich noted that the university's industrial partners include the leaders of the IT industry. Due to this fact, HSE University was awarded the highest A+ ranking by the AI Alliance Russia.

Universities should not consider business as an exclusive customer of educational programmes, she added. There are fundamental skills, and the role of universities in this sense is essential.

© Artem Pryakhin / Roscongress Foundation

How to Keep a Healthy Lifestyle

‘Today we face a very ambitious, difficult, but achievable task—to increase the healthy life expectancy. And our key asset is painstaking, difficult, but very fruitful work on chronic noncommunicable diseases,’ said Alexander Rozanov, Director of the Association of Medical Specialists on Risk Modification, opening the session ‘Health-Preserving Environments: A Pathway to Health for All.’ Low physical activity, being overweight, unhealthy diet, and bad habits lead to the development of cardiovascular diseases, diabetes mellitus, oncological pathology, ie ‘those quiet killers that annually claim hundreds of thousands of lives in the Russian Federation.’ Therefore, it is necessary to study practices and solutions that will increase the proportion of citizens who lead a healthy lifestyle, explains Alexander Rozanov.

Larisa Popovich, Director of the HSE Institute for Health Economics, believes that ‘a huge proportion of diseases can be stopped by preventive measures.’ However, she is amazed by the gap between the proportion of people who want to lead a healthy lifestyle and the number of people who actually lead one. Large enterprises do deal with the issue of employee health, but there are hundreds of thousands of small and medium-sized enterprises in the country, and it is unclear what policy they pursue regarding employee health, says the expert.

Larisa Popovich

© Roscongress Foundation

Reducing the smoking rate by at least 30% could return about one and a half trillion rubles to the economy. ‘We can expect no less an effect from a reduction of at least 30–40% in Russians’ dietary errors and blood sugar levels, as well as blood pressure control,’ she noted.

Maxim Protasov, Head of the Russian System of Quality, noted that according to surveys, at least 96% of citizens talk about longing for a healthy lifestyle. ‘Seventy-six percent of respondents answered that they follow a personal hygiene routine to maintain their health. Seventy-four percent regularly engage in physical activity, and seventy-four percent strive to stick to the rules of healthy eating,’ he said. However, these are only the intentions of Russians, and ‘we can see how many people actually put them into practice, following the results of disease statistics.’ He notes that, for example, Singapore has a system of subsidising manufacturers of healthy products. Similar tools are also available in Russia. In particular, this includes preferential certification and the promotion of useful products to the market.

Rogelio Varela, Chair of the Department of Surgery of the Healthway Qualimed Hospital San Jose del Monte (Philippines), Airat Farrakhov, Deputy of the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, Vice-President of the National Medical Chamber, and other experts also took part in the discussion.

BRICS and the Global Context

Alexey Ivanov, Director of the International BRICS Competition Law and Policy Centre, Professor at the HSE Faculty of Law, moderated the session ‘Drug Security in a Global Context: Intensifying Cooperation,’ which was held as part of the Ensuring Drug Security Forum at SPIEF 2025. The participants—representatives of Russian pharmaceutical businesses, relevant regulators and business associations, as well as Ye Myint, Director General of the Department for Control of Food and Drugs, Ministry of Health of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar (the only international speaker at the pharmaceutical forum)—discussed issues of regulatory solutions and the development of international cooperation to increase access to innovative medicines.

Alexey Ivanov

© HSE University

‘The pharmaceutical industry initially developed in the context of global interaction. Even during periods of serious geopolitical tension, international technology exchange continued and joint research was conducted,’ said Alexey Ivanov. ‘The COVID-19 pandemic was a striking example that clearly demonstrated the importance of cooperation between countries in combating global threats to healthcare.’

He stressed that one of the tasks facing the BRICS antimonopoly authorities' working group on pharmaceutical markets is to create conditions for healthy competition within the BRICS. ‘First of all, this concerns barriers to entry into the pharmaceutical markets of the participating countries, which could stimulate projects in the BRICS countries through bilateral and multilateral cooperation formats,’ he added.

Victoria Panova

The topic of BRICS was also discussed at the session ‘BRICS Charity and Humanitarian Cooperation: Creating a Favourable Environment for People’s Lives.’ Victoria Panova, HSE University Vice Rector, Head of the BRICS Expert Council–Russia, and Russia's sherpa in the W20, participated in its work. ‘BRICS is required and important not only for governments—it is required and important for the peoples of our countries,’ she said. The association is intended to help countries and people develop according to their national interests and improve the well-being of each person, while the leaders of the states are well aware of the need for public and civil dialogue, said Victoria Panova.