Creating market-driven solutions to global health challenges

The title says it all. “Mobilizing the Private Sector for Global Health Development” may be a bit of a mouthful, but the conference is one of the most dynamic events to hit MaRS this year.

The conference is organized by the McLaughlin-Rotman Centre for Global Health – and supported by some of the world’s leading global health innovators and funders, from the Gates and Rockefeller Foundations to Burrill and Company and BIO Ventures for Global Health. Kicking off Wednesday morning, the three-day conference has attracted more than 200 policymakers, entrepreneurs, scientists and investors energized by the prospect of exploring how business and capital market innovation can harnessed to make an impact on intractable global health challenges.

What makes this conference different than many of its ilk is its focus on companies. Over the next two days, more than 70 biotech and life sciences firms from over a dozen countries across the developing world will cultivate new partners, pitch funders, brainstorm with colleagues and connect with counterparts. In the words of Dr. Peter Singer, “globalization of health sciences can make the world a healthier, wealthier and smaller space” — and the private sector has an instrumental role in making this happen.

With company presentations anchoring the Day 2 and 3 agenda, Day 1 was left to C.K. Prahalad, distinguished professor of corporate strategy at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business. For his work on spotlighting the business case around addressing the needs of the 4 billion humans living “at the bottom of the pyramid” (BoP), Prahalad has achieved guru status — and deservedly so.

One of the most important things Prahalad did was to articulate the two moral and strategic imperatives that underlie all of his work on issues of global development:

• First, the poor deserve world-class care;
• Second, “it’s price minus profit = cost” NOT “cost plus profit = price.”

Couple these principles with the fact that over 50% of total health care expenditures in the developing world are spent on goods and services provided by the private sector (a point made most powerfully by the Gates Foundation’s Dr. Carol Dahl) and the result is an incredible opportunity for scientific innovation and business process innovation — and for the 200+ innovators spending the rest of the week at MaRS.