Progress towards achieving universal health coverage and health for all by 2030 requires establishing and sustaining health information systems that continuously provide evidence to facilitate and guide target-oriented investments in R&D for diseases, including for products marked by different types of market failure. Despite an increase in R&D activities for a range of poverty-related diseases primarily affecting low and middle-income countries, significant R&D gaps remain. A major challenge is the fragmented R&D landscape which leads to inefficient resource allocation. Evidence-based global priority setting and facilitating the coordination between major R&D organisations are crucial in view of the limited resources available for product-related health R&D benefitting poverty-related diseases.
This side event will discuss different endeavours to monitor and analyse R&D activities, to inform global priority setting and to promote coordination of investments in product-related health R&D. Among others, the event will introduce: the newly established Global Observatory for Health R&D and its systematic mapping of health R&D activities; the current work on an open-access online resource that includes the WHO validated goals for health products and their targeted diseases; as well as a directory containing a wide array of product profile characteristics developed by WHO and other entities. All these initiatives ultimately aim to inform and facilitate the priority setting for new R&D investments.
Furthermore, the event will present other data collection mechanisms to track R&D activities and efforts to develop standards for R&D data classification, including common reporting formats, such as the G7 technical working group.
All these initiatives will set the agenda for the new Expert Committee on Health R&D to provide advice on Global R&D priorities that would be supported by a potential health product R&D fund and other existing R&D financing mechanisms.
Join us for this panel discussion. You are required to register online your attendance, free of charge.
This event is co-organised by Switzerland, South Africa, and the European Commission.
Event materials
Presentation: Dr Vasee Moorthy