In the United States, we have high expectations for our diagnostics. Lipid profiles, urine analysis, and HIV CD4 counts are requested stat. If a person might be anemic, iron levels are checked immediately. And if there’s the slightest chance a woman might be pregnant, she expects a home pregnancy test to confirm or deny a pregnancy pronto.

Though I am making light of our impatience, accurate diagnosis can be the difference between life and death for serious conditions—which is why the lack of effective diagnostics in poor countries is such a problem.

BIO Ventures for Global Health has focused its newest report, The Diagnostics Innovation Map: Medical Diagnostics for the Unmet Needs of the Developing World, on the groundbreaking technologies that are paving the way for rapid, accurate diagnoses in the developing world. The report highlights companies that represent some of the most innovative in their approach and whose technologies have the greatest potential for changing the paradigm for how diseases are diagnosed and treated in the developing world.

In the developing world, essential diagnostics are often not available to patients or health care providers. In Africa, more than 70% of the population lives in a setting with minimal health care infrastructure or without regular access to electricity or clean water, laboratory facilities, or trained health workers. In such an environment, diagnostics must be simple, easy-to-use, resource efficient, robust, low-cost, and able to be administered at the point of patient care. Many existing diagnostics—tests that are used every day in the developed world—are unusable in resource-poor settings, creating a tremendous need for new technologies suitable for the developing world.

Yet investment in diagnostics research and development (R&D) is low. Diagnostics R&D receives far less funding than drug or vaccine R&D. In fact, according to the George Institute 2009 G-FINDER report, Neglected Disease Research and Development: New Times, New Trends, less than five percent of annual R&D funding for neglected diseases is allocated for diagnostics. In 2008, a total of $2.96 billion was spent on global health R&D and only $119 million of that went to diagnostic research.

New pathways for how to fund and organize the development of new point-of-care diagnostics are also critically needed. Current grant mechanisms, while important, do not stimulate the collaboration of enough organizations with the full range of expertise needed to develop these new innovations into diagnostic tests appropriate for the diseases and health care conditions of the developing world.

A new pay-for-success financial incentive could lead to greater success in developing these types of tests.

There is a tremendous need for new diagnostics—and for greater investment in diagnostics R&D. At BIO Ventures for Global Health, we believe that we can advance groundbreaking diagnostics for the developing world with the creation of incentives that provide a return on investment to companies. Working together, we can find market-based solutions that will speed the development of diagnostics for the world’s poorest, and thus improve health outcomes for those most in need.

For more information, please contact BIO Ventures for Global Health at info@bvgh.org. Visit the BVGH Web site to read the report online.

Thayer Hardwick is a research analyst at BIO Ventures for Global Health.