Private Sector Entrepreneurship in Global Health: Innovation, Scale and Sustainability

Poor access to care in low- and middle-income countries due to high costs, geographic barriers, and a shortage of trained medical staff has motivated many organizations to rethink their model of health service delivery. Many of these new models are being developed by private sector actors, including non-profits, such as non-governmental organizations, and for-profits, such as social enterprises. By partnering extensively with public sector organizations, these non-state actors have enormous potential to scale innovation in global health. Understanding how these leading organizations operate and target hard-to-reach groups may yield key insights to sustainably improve health care for all.

Private Sector Entrepreneurship in Global Health includes writings by management, medicine, and social science experts who have studied trends in private sector health care innovations over the last ten years. It provides a wide range of examples from many regions and health areas and outlines tools to assess the performance of innovative private sector health programs in low- and middle-income countries. The studies reported in this volume explore new marketing and finance models, digital health innovations, and unique organizational processes emerging from the private sector to serve those most in need. Drawing on the analysis of over one thousand organizations engaged in health market innovations, this volume is a valuable resource for researchers and students in management, global health, medicine, development studies, health economics, and anthropology, as well as program managers, social impact investors, funders, and policymakers interested in understanding approaches emerging from the private sector in health care.

Kathryn Mossman is a research coordinator at Women’s College Hospital and manager of the Toronto Health Organization Performance Evaluation (T-HOPE) team at the University of Toronto.
Anita M. McGahan is a professor and the Rotman Chair in Management at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto.
Will Mitchell is the Anthony S. Fell Chair in New Technologies and Commercialization at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto.
Onil Bhattacharyya is a family physician and the Frigon-Blau Chair in Family Medicine Research at Women’s College Hospital in Toronto. He is also an associate professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine and the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto.