Private sector funding of drugs and vaccines designed to help people in the developing world lags what is needed to deal with illnesses. There has been considerable progress in fighting these diseases, but more effort is needed since only around $6.3 billion is devoted to diseases prevalent in low and middle-income countries (LMICs).

Based on the authors’ analysis of research by global health experts, they find eight key results:

  1. Greater public research funding “helped advance private sector R&D”
  2. Advance market commitments “have the potential to incentivize investment” and “reduce uncertainty for donors and suppliers”
  3. Orphan drug programs administered by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the European Union “have increased health R&D funding”
  4. “A priority reviewer voucher has had a positive impact on private sector health R&D spending”
  5. There are “mixed opinions” regarding tax credits for private sector R&D investment
  6. Wild-card patent extensions are costly and it is not clear they are beneficial to overall investment
  7. “Proprietary scientific information plays a generally positive role in creating incentives for private sector global health R&D”
  8. “Proprietary market information—especially moving forward with enormous data repositories and especially for LMICs—may create more downstream rents”

Read the full article on private investment in global health by Darrell M. West at Brookings