—
The market failure perspective that dominates the lack of AMR innovation multiplies it’s own problems through a lack of directionality and ineffective collaboration between public and private actors.
—
Two of the biggest issues that are preventing this market failure from being addressed through typical ‘public good’ policy making are a lack of directionality and inefficient collaboration.
—
Two of the biggest issues facing the biopharmaceutical innovation system are a lack of directionality and inefficient collaboration.
First, because firms lack directionally, they adopt low risk strategies - skewing the system towards revenue-rich aliments and even resulting in diseases relevant to high-income countries being seven to eight times more likely to be investigated than those that mainly affect low- and middle-income countries (Røttingen et al. 2013).
Second, because they cannot collaborate efficiently there is no effective and transparent data sharing in both public and private research institutions. This makes the research process less efficient and exposes research and its outcomes to bias in favour of actors’ specific interests (be they financial or scientific).
fundamentally…
where the state is investing billions into the discovery of new scientific research in typically higher risk health innovations, private companies are reaping the reward of lower-risk development activities.
A state of Innovation in Antibacterial Therapeutics report from 2022, shows that whilst globally the public and private investments for antimicrobial resistance R&D is similar - when put into perspective by the fact private firms are investing 17x more into oncology R&D there is a clear lack of incentive for private firms (Thomas et al., 2022).
ROUTES + DIRECTIONALITY and ASSESSMENT
GAMRIF lacks directionality, encourages firms to adopt low-risk strategies skewing the system towards revenue-rich aliments - shown in the stats above. When