Problem
We are facing several health challenges across the world [1]. Accessible healthcare is a luxury the majority of the world’s population doesn’t have. Finding solutions to health problems can be lengthy, complex and demanding [2]. Past or present solutions and strategies do not always work [3]. Health systems are facing major challenges due to pricing of pharmaceuticals, and the research and testing of new drugs and treatments is a complex process [4-6]. Public health services do not always provide the care that people require. Further, people who require care face challenges linked to access, money, social stigma, location and lack of sufficient information.

Facts and Figures

• Pregnant women in low and middle-income countries face unnecessarily high levels of maternal and neonatal mortality [7].

• Poverty causes significant  impairment in psychological well-being and cognitive processes [8].

• The pharmaceutical industry is highly controlled by financial interests and  plays a part in shaping greater inequalities in access to medicine [9].

• Between 2008 and 2018, R&D activity developed (6) more medicine for profitable non-communicable diseases than those related to poverty [10]. 

• In 2017, research demonstrated that due to shifts in poverty distribution, around 70% of people living in poverty are increasingly losing their eligibility for health support from large international institutions, such as the Global Fund and GAVI [10-12].

Solution 
Healthcare needs a much larger pool of innovative solutions and a more agile way to effectively respond to challenges [13]. National governments, the international community, the nonprofit sector and the for-profit industry, including medicine manufacturers, should play a role in improving health systems and  access to medicine, especially in low and middle-income countries [14-16]. The organisations below each deal with a significant aspect of human healthcare such as sharing information, participating in research or the distribution of care, treatment and medicine.

Sources

1. World Economic Forum - These are the 10 biggest global health threats of the decade (link)
2. Macquarie University - Complexity Science in Healthcare (whitepaper)
3. Studying complexity in health services research: desperately seeking an overdue paradigm shift (research paper)
4. Pricing of pharmaceuticals is becoming a major challenge for health systems (research paper)
5. Datamining in drug discovery and design (book)
6. Improving and Accelerating Therapeutic Development for Nervous System Disorders (report)
7. Household saving during pregnancy and facility delivery in Zambia: a cross-sectional study (research paper)
8. Reducing debt improves psychological functioning and changes decision-making in the poor (research paper)
9. WHO - Access to medicines: making market forces serve the poor (link)
10. New study from the Foundation analyses 10 years of data on pharma companies and access to medicine (article)
11. The Global Fund - Accelerating the end of AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria as epidemics
     (link)
12. The Global Vaccines Alliance (link)
13. 12 Innovations That Will Change Health Care and Medicine in the 2020s (article)
14. WHO - Innovation, Access and Use (link)
15. Innovative Approaches to Increase Access to Medicines in Developing Countries (research paper)
16. Improving Access to Medicines in Low and Middle-Income Countries: Corporate Responsibilities in Context (research paper)