By developing innovative new technologies and products that address the health needs of developing countries, the in vitro diagnostics (IVD) industry has the opportunity to not only address world poverty, but also achieve strong commercial return through the application of these technologies back into markets in the developed world.
Since the drafting of the Millennium Development Goals in 20001 the world has focused efforts to quantifiably reduce global poverty by 2015. Key to this effort is management of the big pandemic diseases that are responsible for huge human, and hence economic, losses among populations that are least able to afford them.
Millennium Development Goal No. 6 identifies Malaria, HIV and TB as major contributors to extreme poverty and constitutes a continuing threat to global health security. Through the development of technologies that address these specific diseases in developing nations, the IVD industry can play a vital role in closing the gap in healthcare for the poorest countries on earth and in doing so also re-shape the IVD technology industry.