Donors and funding agencies, such as USAID, DFID, and the Gates Foundation - as well as their beneficiaries like GAVI and the Global Fund - are in the business of saving lives and place great value on using their aid dollars effectively. But only with better forecasting and efficient contracting will existing efforts to develop new products actually translate donors' aid investment into improved health
Donors have opportunities to support multi-product, systemic improvements by committing start-up funding to a global health infomediary. These funds would go toward developing an electronic repository to gather and house data; providing initial analyses and forecasts; populating the repository with available data and creating interfaces to update this data on an ongoing basis; and incorporating new data and market research studies into the repository as they are conducted. The immediate step toward this end would be to develop a request for proposals that would outline the key functions of the infomediary, its business model and the qualifications of a host institution.
Armed with better information from the infomediary, funders could then increase access to critical medical technologies--and reduce their hidden costs--by assuming a greater share of the financial risk currently borne by suppliers; this can be achieved through the adoption of efficient contracting mechanisms.