New England Journal of Medicine
September 1, 2011  Vol. 365 No. 9
http://content.nejm.org/current.shtml

Global Health: Health Technologies and Innovation in the Global Health Arena
S.R. Sinha and M. Barry
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Extract
In recent years, interest in both global health and health care innovation has grown tremendously, and there has been increasing recognition of the importance of medical devices and other nonpharmaceutical health-related technologies to all aspects of health care. In 2007, for example, the World Health Organization (WHO) issued the first global directive on medical devices, recognizing that, like medicines, many health technologies are indispensible. Many appropriate technologies, however, are inaccessible to the majority of people who need them, particularly in low- and middle-income countries — largely because of capacity constraints, a perception that medical devices are out of the reach of or superfluous to developing countries, and the lack of assiduous, multidisciplinary needs assessment and innovation promotion in such countries.

The recognition that the “right to health” should include access to certain devices comes more than 30 years after similar recognition for essential medicines…