5 lessons about unleashing the potential of pro-poor health innovation

It’s increasingly accepted that major improvements in global health require participation and collaboration of many actors, both public and private. After all, in many countries private providers are the first stop for people falling sick with malaria, tuberculosis, acute respiratory infections or other common but serious afflictions.

At the Center for Health Market Innovations, we want health markets to achieve their potential in reducing child and maternal mortality and other national health goals. To this end, we identify organizations — nonprofits, social enterprises, companies and governments — applying promising new approaches to improve the health of their communities. We have identified close to 1,300 such organizations, all of which are profiled in our online database. But many of these entities are not meeting their potential due to a lack of financing, poor access to technical expertise, limited support from governments to fund care for the poor, and other barriers. They need to scale up, so they can reach more people, and do it cost-effectively.

So we spend a considerable amount of time thinking about how to scale the impact of innovations and unleash a lot of untapped potential. Here are five things we’ve learned since we launched CHMI four years ago: