What is the Oxford International Biomedical Centre (OIBC)?

OIBC is a high-level humanitarian organization targeted at the UK and the developing world. It is an international charity registered in the UK (No 1038260) with a supporting organisation - the American Friends of OIBC - registered in Missouri, USA (N 00045685).

The ‘commercial arm’ of OIBC is Oxford International Biomedical Ventures (OIBV) Ltd.
The Directors of OIBV are Mr Percy Lomax (Chairman), Prof Charles Pasternak and Mr Paul Pattinson (also Company Secretary).

Biomedical: The term biomedical is used to denote the biochemical approach to medicine. This includes products, e.g. vaccines, antibiotics, drugs, and procedures, e.g. non-invasive diagnosis by magnetic resonance, gene therapy, etc, relating to medicine. Because the underlying technologies apply equally to animals and plants, advances are as relevant to agriculture as to medicine.

Why is OIBC needed?

Diseases like tuberculosis, malaria and AIDS alone kill about 5 million people - many of them children in the developing world - each year. This poses a two-fold challenge for scientific research and training. How to enable the intellectual abilities of three quarters of the globe in which these diseases largely occur - yet who are without sufficient resources - to be fulfilled so that they can tackle the problem themselves, and how to integrate the commercial and fundamental basis of scientific endeavour in order to improve health and the quality of life. The problems are enormous, but so are the potential rewards. The solution lies in a single word: cooperation. Cooperation between developing and developed countries; cooperation between academic and industrial institutions; cooperation between scientists and medical doctors. It is to translate these aims into reality that the Oxford International Biomedical Centre was established.

Our Mission

To improve health and the quality of life across the globe by promoting access to learning and research.

Our Goals

1.       To enable scientists and medical doctors from Asia, Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe to gain better access to Western knowledge and its practitioners.

2.       To share information on third world diseases that are now appearing in the West.

3.       To foster an understanding of scientific and medical issues by senior schoolchildren and the lay public.

4.       To promote biomedical research and development through commercial ventures within and outside the UK.

Our achievements

Since its launch in 1992, OIBC has organised international conferences and workshops in 20 locations across 4 continents. It has signed collaborative agreements with prestigious institutions in 5 countries, and its Director has lectured across the globe. Scientists and medical doctors in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe have benefited from these endeavours.

Cost effectiveness of our programmes

Some 3,000 participants have profited from OIBC's events over the past 10 years. On the assumption that each participant - many a senior scientist - transmits the knowledge gained to 10 others, 30,000 people have been beneficiaries of OIBC's programmes to date. Since total net cost has been some £8,000 ($12,000) this means that OIBC is able to impart up-to-date know-how at a cost of 27p (40c) per person.

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