Johan Merwe

Wits Health Consortium

Wits Health Consortium (Pty) Limited ("WHC") is a wholly owned Company of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (South Africa) under its Faculty of Health Sciences. WHC provides Faculty with a legal framework within which to operate the research and other activities necessary to support its academic objectives. In addition WHC offers a range of products and services to the Academics conducting these activities in order to assist with the management thereof. WHC was formed in March 1998 to harness and stimulate the commercial potential within Faculty, and in particular to capitalise on clinical research. The flexible manner in which WHC is structured encourages academics to operate their entities along entrepreneurial lines with strong investigator ownership. WHC balances reducing unnecessary bureaucratic control whilst still ensuring that activities are conducted in a formalised, controlled and well managed environment. WHC has also been the fertile breeding ground for many initiatives, the most notable being the formation of the Wits Donald Gordon Medical Centre which was incubated within WHC and eventually established in its own entity. WHC is a not-for-profit organisation as all surpluses are reinvested in either WHC's or the University's operational and academic infrastructures.