Australia's vaccine legacy: Time for a boost? Mapping an innovation system in a fragmented data environment

Global vaccine development relies on a decentralised, collaborative approach where national and international capabilities interact. Policy alignment and resource pooling are essential to ensure the efficacy and efficiency of innovation programs. Yet empirical mapping of national vaccine innovation systems is limited. This paper presents a focused case study of Australia's historical vaccine innovation system (2000−2023), analysing patterns in inventive activity (642 patents), public R&D funding (522 awarded grants), and clinical trial registrations (349 clinical trials).Findings show episodic increases in patenting activity, including a surge during the COVID-19 pandemic, demonstrating responsiveness of the innovation system. Second, a positive aggregate association between public R&D funding and inventive output is visible in distinct disease areas, including influenza, malaria, and HIV. However, these domestic investments only partially translate into Australian-sponsored clinical trial activity. Much of the clinical trials volume, particularly for seasonal diseases, is driven by international sponsors that leverage Australia's attractive R&D environment and its unique position in the Southern Hemisphere.Importantly, the attempt to follow individual vaccine “assets” along the value chain revealed that public datasets are too fragmented and heterogeneous for one-to-one linkages. This limitation is emphasised in the framing of the findings and consequently the data are presented descriptively, highlighting both strengths and constraints of available public databases for mapping vaccine innovation.The analysis contributes to understanding Australia's national vaccine innovation system and provides a foundation for future work, while underscoring the need for consistent unique identifiers across publicly available datasets to enable end-to-end tracking. A sustained and aligned focus on national research priorities in a global context could further enhance Australia's contribution to global health security and stimulate growth in its biotechnology sector. To support this, a system based on the technology readiness levels framework is proposed to accurately track progress of vaccine innovations along the vaccine innovation cycle.