Medical innovation and disease burden [electronic resource] : conflicting priorities and the social divide in India / Sobin George.

"Striking the right balance between public health priorities and health innovation is a critical policy challenge for India, given their mutually conflicting nature and interests. On the one side, the country has an expanding health industry with a strong presence of domestic and multinational private firms. The sector, with enormous state facilitation, could effectively position itself as the future engine of economic growth by rearranging itself to the new intellectual property and trade regimes. On the other side, India has a huge burden of diseases implicated by a gamut of public health problems including the uneven distribution of demographic and epidemiological transition, threat of new infectious disease pandemic like COVID-19, increasing privatisation of healthcare, less regulated pharmaceutical market, low affordability to life-saving medicines and most importantly the escalating out-of-pocket healthcare expenditure coupled with poor financial risk protection. All these make the Indian healthscape not only diverse but exceedingly complex as well. Given these, the central question that the book addresses is whether medical innovation in India is sensitive to public health needs and priorities. The book unearths a number of overriding issues related to responsiveness and equity in India's health innovation and highlights the need for a responsible innovation framework for India that balances the priorities of public health and industry goals"-- Provided by publisher.