Over the past decade, USAID has supported over 150 global health innovations through open innovation efforts, including Grand Challenges for Development and Development Innovation Ventures. These initiatives harness the power of crowdsourcing, competition, and partnerships to identify breakthrough innovations around critical health problems that require creative solutions. However, without scale, the impact of these innovations is limited.
USAID’s Center for Innovation and Impact’s (CII’s) Global Health Innovation Index draws from USAID’s health innovation portfolio to offer a strategic approach by helping identify promising, ready-to-launch innovations. To assess the breadth of health innovations across sectors, geographies, and disciplines, this Global Health Innovation Index presents four criteria: 1) health impact; 2) demand and sustainability; 3) organizational and/or partner capacity; and 4) progress to scale. We share this framework in hopes it can be useful to countries, other donors, and partners as well as to our own health teams. The Index also highlights 9 promising global health innovations that have already scaled to some degree, are ready to scale further, and demonstrate how the Index criteria can be applied. These 9 innovations, which include a drastically simpler rate monitor for safe IV infusions, a digital platform powered by behavioral science nudges to increase treatment adherence, and mosquitoes that can prevent transmission of Zika in whole communities, extend services to unreached communities and overcome barriers to care.
