Presented by:
Harvey Rubin, Professor of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, and Chair of the Scientific Advisory Committee, Incentives for Global Health
Overview: The proposed Health Impact Fund is a new way of stimulating R&D for life-saving pharmaceuticals. To provide wide access, prices need to be affordable—but low prices do not create strong incentives to invest in R&D and distribution. Financed mainly by governments, the fund would offer firms the option to be rewarded according to a product's health impact, if they agree to sell it at cost. The planned pilot will develop and apply the health impact assessment with a particular medicine in a specific country, allowing the pay-for-performance approach to be field-tested before being implemented on a wider scale.
