Filipino innovators get boost from DoST grants

The Department of Science and Technology pledges aspiring Filipino innovators and inventors assistance through various government grants that will bolster their products in the commercial market.

In a televised interview, a DoST key official said that the agency’s Technology Application and Promotion Institute, or TAPI, division serves as the marketing arm for local technology and inventions and provides financial and technical assistance to the inventors to prepare their products for commercialization.

"For us to come up with an invention, what our agency advises is that we have a patent search or simply searching the net for existing products," said DoST TAPI supervising science research specialist Anna Liza Saet.

"Here we can see if our idea is viable. Is this supported by science or maybe we just thought, as if we stumbled and we thought of it, or maybe this is a need in our market? This is what the industry needs right now,” she continued.

She went on by explaining that from the concept formulation, the TAPI will assess if the proposal is technically viable.

Saet, meanwhile, assured that all the inventors' ideas and inventions will be protected under the Intellectual Property Rights Assistance Program.

"This is financial assistance to give proper protection to their products, their technologies, their creations so that in the end they have a vantage or leverage to commercialize it in the market," she said.

After a prototype or working model is produced, the project will undergo validation, in which the agency will apply its Grants and Assistance to Leverage Innovations for National Growth, also called the GALING program, wherein they will provide financial aid for the validation of the technology, as well as assess its marketability to the public.

"One way for our inventors to at least be confident, if we have proven that it can be sold in the market, it's good that they don't forget to have IP protection," Saet continued.

"They should not just launch any product in the market that is not given proper protection. We have patents, utility models, industrial designs or copyrights so that at least we can say that the product that we will launch in the market is also protected," she further expressed.

Among the products supported by the DoST grant is the make-roscope, a single-lens microscope that is embedded in a keychain.

Besides the GALING program, the DoST TAPI also has the Technology Innovation for Commercialization, or TECHNiCOM Program, which also provides aid to aspiring researchers and innovators in making their products market-ready.