Regions
MAIN/REGIONS
regions/
Regions
  1. Americas
  2. Asia & Oceania
  3. Europe
  4. Middle East & Africa
  1. Solutions
  2. Products
  3. Insights
  4. About
  5. Careers
  6. Contact Us
MAIN/search
MAIN/Solutions
Solutions/
SOLUTIONS
  • Research & Development
  • Real World Evidence
  • Commercialization
  • Safety & Regulatory Compliance
  • Technologies
LIFE SCIENCE SEGMENTS
HEALTHCARE SEGMENTS
THERAPEUTIC AREAS

Impacting People's Lives

"We strive to help improve outcomes and create a healthier, more sustainable world for people everywhere.

LEARN MORE
Harness the power to transform clinical development

Reimagine clinical development by intelligently connecting data, technology, and analytics to optimize your trials. The result? Faster decision making and reduced risk so you can deliver life-changing therapies faster.

Research & Development Overview
Research & Development Quick Links
Real World Evidence. Real Confidence. Real Results.

Generate and disseminate evidence that answers crucial clinical, regulatory and commercial questions, enabling you to drive smarter decisions and meet your stakeholder needs with confidence.

REAL WORLD EVIDENCE OVERVIEW
Real World Evidence Quick Links
See markets more clearly. Opportunities more often.

Elevate commercial models with precision and speed using AI-driven analytics and technology that illuminate hidden insights in data.

COMMERCIALIZATION OVERVIEW
Commercialization Quick Links
Service driven. Tech-enabled. Integrated compliance.

Orchestrate your success across the complete compliance lifecycle with best-in-class services and solutions for safety, regulatory, quality and medical information.

COMPLIANCE OVERVIEW
Safety & Regulatory Compliance Quick Links
Intelligence that transforms life sciences end-to-end.

When your destination is a healthier world, making intelligent connections between data, technology, and services is your roadmap.

TECHNOLOGIES OVERVIEW
Technology Quick Links
MAIN/Products
Products/
CLINICAL PRODUCTS
COMMERCIAL PRODUCTS
COMPLIANCE, SAFETY, REG PRODUCTS
REAL WORLD PRODUCTS

CASE STUDY

"Data in a Day

LEARN MORE
MAIN/Insights
Insights/
BLOGS, WHITE PAPERS & CASE STUDIES

Explore our library of insights, thought leadership, and the latest topics & trends in healthcare.

DISCOVER INSIGHTS
THE IQVIA INSTITUTE

An in-depth exploration of the global healthcare ecosystem with timely research, insightful analysis, and scientific expertise.

SEE LATEST REPORTS

INSTITUTE REPORT

"Global Trends in R&D 2024

READ MORE

EMEA Insights

"IQVIA thought leadership with a focus on EMEA.

Learn more

WHITE PAPER

"DCTs Deliver Big ROI

LEARN MORE

WHITE PAPER

"Capturing value at scale: The $4 billion RWE imperative

LEARN MORE
MAIN/About
About/
FEATURED INNOVATIONS
  • IQVIA Connected Intelligence™
  • IQVIA Healthcare-grade AI™
  • Human Data Science Cloud
  • IQVIA Innovation Hub
  • Decentralized Trials
  • Patient Experience Solutions with Apple devices
WHO WE ARE
NEWS & RESOURCES

INVESTOR RELATIONS

"Visit our investor relations site for more information.

LEARN MORE
Unlock your potential to drive healthcare forward

By making intelligent connections between your needs, our capabilities, and the healthcare ecosystem, we can help you be more agile, accelerate results, and improve patient outcomes.

LEARN MORE
IQVIA AI is Healthcare-grade AI

Building on a rich history of developing AI for healthcare, IQVIA AI connects the right data, technology, and expertise to address the unique needs of healthcare. It's what we call Healthcare-grade AI.

LEARN MORE

Your healthcare data deserves more than just a cloud.

The IQVIA Human Data Science Cloud is our unique capability designed to enable healthcare-grade analytics, tools, and data management solutions to deliver fit-for-purpose global data at scale.

LEARN MORE
Innovations make an impact when bold ideas meet powerful partnerships

The IQVIA Innovation Hub connects start-ups with the extensive IQVIA network of assets, resources, clients, and partners. Together, we can help lead the future of healthcare with the extensive IQVIA network of assets, resources, clients, and partners.

LEARN MORE
Proven, faster DCT solutions

IQVIA Decentralized Trials deliver purpose-built clinical services and technologies that engage the right patients wherever they are. Our hybrid and fully virtual solutions have been used more than any others.

LEARN MORE
IQVIA Patient Experience Solutions with Apple devices

Empowering patients to personalize their healthcare and connecting them to caregivers has the potential to change the care delivery paradigm.

LEARN MORE
MAIN/Careers
Careers/
WORKING AT IQVIA

Our mission is to accelerate innovation for a healthier world. Together, we can solve customer challenges and improve patient lives.

LEARN MORE
LIFE AT IQVIA

Careers, culture and everything in between. Find out what’s going on right here, right now.

LEARN MORE

WE’RE HIRING

"Improving human health requires brave thinkers who are willing to explore new ideas and build on successes. Unleash your potential with us.

SEARCH JOBS
MAIN/Contact Us
Contact Us/
Institute Report
Scaling-Up Inclusive Healthcare Initiatives in Low- and Middle-Income Countries
Assessing the landscape of innovative approaches
May 31, 2022
To download files, please accept Functional Cookies. These cookies provide enhanced functionality for a better user experience.

Web Summary

Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are on the rise in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), increasing the financial and health burden affecting these vulnerable populations. To reverse this trend will require not only resources, but also new business models for LMICs that can overcome the barriers patients face to receiving care, such as unaffordable, unavailable, or inaccessible healthcare services and treatments, and limited awareness of disease and preventative care.

Over the past decade, a new wave of pioneer healthcare initiatives has emerged that aims to improve the quality of care and access to healthcare of vulnerable populations in LMICs by building commercially viable and scalable enterprises. These pioneers are developing novel delivery models – inclusive clinics and hospitals, pharmacy-based, community-based, and risk-prevention models – and are innovating to solve patient pain points by making use of mobile and digital technologies, offering financing and insurance solutions, and improving access to preventative and primary care.

This report reviews the preliminary findings of a study performed by the IQVIA Institute for Human Data Science, together with Hystra – a consultancy specialized in inclusive business solutions – to learn from pioneer organizations what underlies their early successes and what is limiting them from reaching further scale or impact. It reviews the landscape of global inclusive initiatives and identifies innovations that can strengthen the impact of businesses. This work is intended to feed a later phase of research whose ultimate intent is to identify and scale up effective inclusive businesses.

In that second phase of the analysis, which will be presented in a future report in this series, an in-depth analysis will be conducted of selected initiatives deemed to be promising, to understand the reason for their success, their scalability challenges, and concrete solutions to solve these issues. The intent will be to build on these lessons to share with partners high-potential localized blueprints offering concrete opportunities to target non-communicable diseases.

Key Findings

  • Though low- and middle-income countries are experiencing a rising prevalence of noncommunicable diseases such as diabetes, cancer, and heart and lung diseases, and now account for 57% of NCD deaths globally, NCDs account for only 1% of development assistance for health to these areas in 2018.
  • Led by pioneers, promising inclusive initiatives are emerging to address, in a holistic way, the rising chronic disease burden and improve diagnosis, treatment, and care for those in low- and middle-income countries.
  • Initiatives can be categorized based on their approach to improving health into one of four business models — inclusive clinics and hospitals, and pharmacy-based, community-based, and risk-prevention models — which differ in the level of care they provide and their setting.
  • However, the speed at which these models are being developed remains slow, and only few have reached their ambition for economic sustainability and scale.
  • Analyzing the global landscape of current inclusive healthcare initiatives, along with factors influencing their effectiveness and efficiency and barriers to reaching more significant scale, can help identify which approaches are most likely to be successful in LMICs.
  • Among 244 health initiatives identified and profiled, 41% of these are based in Sub-Saharan Africa, 29% in South Asia, with the rest in Latin America and Southeast Asia.
  • Inclusive businesses provide goods, services, and livelihoods to people living at the base of the pyramid through commercially viable and scalable enterprises and bring poor and underserved individuals into their value chain as suppliers, employees, distributors, retailers, or customers.
  • Inclusive health initiatives can be categorized based on their approach to improving health, into one of four business models, which differ in the level of care they provide and their care setting:
    • Inclusive clinics and hospitals:
      • Present in urban areas where population prevalence and density justify the brick-and-mortar investment, these models have developed breakthrough innovations that reduce costs or increase affordability for low-income and at-risk populations.
      • Many have aimed to increase their reach into more rural areas via hub-and-spoke models, and by leveraging telemedicine and other technologies, while several pioneer organizations have also succeeded in reducing health costs via task optimization, frugality, and the adoption of new technologies.
      • Some questions remain such as how to replicate such businesses so they can grow from a few successful facilities into widespread networks, how to increase the scale of hub-and-spoke models, how they can be adapted to the specific requirements of NCDs, and how to make those models further affordable in the absence of universal healthcare.
    • Pharmacy-based models:
      • These models constitute a vibrant sector of digital start-ups with business-to-business models that aim to build relationships with existing formal and informal pharmacies in LMICs and leverage technology to address supply chain challenges (drug traceability, drug availability, stock management) and, by doing so, can improve affordability and accessibility of products for patients.
      • For instance, many pharmacy-based models provide support in sales and inventory management to pharmacies in their network, and aggregate demand to get better price points, improve cost-efficiency of delivery, and optimize logistics. Some also seek to offer more holistic solutions beyond drug access, for example, by developing preventative and primary care services around pharmacies or improving adherence.
      • The main questions with these models are whether the savings from economies of scale can be passed on to patients, how these can meet the specific needs of patients with NCDs beyond the supply of medicines (e.g., referral to HCPs, improving adherence to treatment, improving access to insurance and savings, etc.), and how they are leveraging existing touchpoints in LMICs to enhance access to primary care.
    • Community-based Models:
      • Community-based models offer preventative and primary care to healthy and at-risk populations, predominantly in rural settings, but also sometimes in urban slums. In some cases, they can also sell basic drugs, depending on the country’s authorization.
      • This model has historically relied on community members to reach populations at the last mile. The rise of digital technologies and telemedicine has enhanced these models; broadening the range of health services they offer.
      • Although community-based models offer ways to serve the health needs of populations at the last mile, questions remain on how these businesses can strengthen their revenue model to be economically sustainable – most of these have been developed with the support of philanthropic private or public funding – and how they may become embedded into formal healthcare systems.
    • Risk-prevention models:
      • Risk-prevention models are responsible for the provision of health insurance and preventive care to both healthy and at-risk populations. These sometimes involve financial solutions like standalone health insurance to reduce the financial burden and risks that patients face or provide solutions for patient disease self-monitoring.
      • Notably these models are becoming more holistic and integrated, sometimes combining platforms that help patients to mitigate health risks through both, financial solutions and behavior change programs. These have also increasingly harnessed mobile technologies to expand their reach and improve their services (e.g., streamlining their client relationships and claim processes).
      • Among the key areas that need to be further investigated for businesses in this area are how they could encourage vulnerable populations to invest in prevention despite there being a future uncertain benefit, how co-payment and innovation financing models can lower the costs of risk prevention for patients, and how risk-prevention models relevant to NCDs can be developed to encourage healthier behaviors.

Related solutions

Government

Use big data and predictive analytics to improve human health.

Industry Segments

See how we partner with organizations across the healthcare ecosystem, from emerging biotechnology and large pharmaceutical, to medical technology, consumer health, and more, to drive human health forward.

Contact Us