The R&D process for pharmaceuticals is long, hard and expensive because it needs to pass regulations. And it kinda needs to be like that to keep the safety of people. But most areas of invention are not like that, there are no such strict regulations, or the need for them. So an idea would be to remove patents as a general invention-protecting mechanism, and replace it with a protection tailored specific to the regulations that cause the problem to be so significant, like in pharmaceuticals. Maybe the FDA could even administer/enforce it.