Product Development Partnerships: Case studies of a new mechanism for health technology innovation

Developing countries face many challenges to their social and economic development. With limited resources, they need to provide education to their children, ensure an adequate supply of food, stimulate the development of industry, build up an efficient transportation system, and provide health care to the population, among many others. To be successful in addressing these challenges, developing countries must be able to harness new technologies that are rapidly becoming available. In recent years, there have been rapid advances in the development and availability of new health technologies especially new vaccines and drugs for diseases that exact a heavy burden on developing countries. These include new vaccines against diarrhea, respiratory infections, and cervical cancer, and drugs such as the highly active antiretroviral therapies (HAART) for AIDS, and drugs for malaria. The availability of these new technologies holds great promise for addressing important diseases in developing countries, but also presents great challenges in financing and delivering these technologies to people in need.Despite these recent advances in health technology there remain many diseases for which there are inadequate or no technologies that can reduce their burden on health. There are pressing needs for vaccines against AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis, and against neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) such as hookworm, schistosomiasis, and dengue. There is also a need for new and improved drugs against most of these diseases [1].These twin challenges of financing and delivering existing technologies and developing new and improved technologies have led to important initiatives by developing countries and by the global health community.The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has been established to mobilize donor funds to procure and supply needed drugs for developing countries [2]. The GAVI Alliance similarly has been established to procure and supply needed vaccines for