AMR Funding Circle

Antimicrobial resistance is responsible for millions of deaths worldwide, and externalities caused by overprescription may not be properly accounted for during prescription decisions. In the future, sufficiently antimicrobial-resistant bacteria could become the basis for a pandemic. Technological innovation for diagnostic tests for more rapid diagnosis could help ameliorate this problem.

Charity Entrepreneurship

Antimicrobial resistance costs the world more than 47 million disability-adjusted life years per annum. However, the market incentive for pharmaceutical companies to invest in stopping this problem is inadequate—pull funding mechanisms can accelerate vital antimicrobial resistance research and development.

Max Langenkamp

A potential risk vector for an engineered pandemic would be through a hack of a facility that hosts or has the ability to create deadly viruses. Bug bounties and other incentives could help enhance security at high biosecurity risk locations, such as DNA synthesis facilities.

(German) Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation – SPRIND

A pull mechanism can be used to incentivize the creation of a broad-spectrum antiviral, particularly for coronaviruses. Such an invention could both prevent future pandemics and help respond quicker in case of an outbreak.

Panoplia Laboratories

A demand-pull incentive could motivate firms and researchers to develop broad-spectrum medical countermeasures to combat future pandemics before they even occur. Private firms are not adequately rewarded for the development of new technologies that may have other socially valuable uses beyond the lifespan of the patent, e.g. during a future pandemic. A well-designed pull mechanism could make broad-spectrum countermeasures a crucial part of the pandemic-fighting toolkits.

Petya Tsoneva

Rapid, cheap, and accessible diagnostic tests could help combat the next pandemic. Today, high-quality PCR tests can take anywhere from a few hours to a few days to get results—in a pandemic, one could spread the disease during that crucial time period. But where’s the commercial incentive to invest in this technology as the pandemic wanes? There is great social value in creating these tests now, before another pandemic strikes.

Jakob Jonnerby

Cheap, sensitive, and non-invasive diagnostic tests (such as saliva tests) could help detect infectious diseases earlier and prevent outbreaks before they take root. However, there is inadequate commercial incentive to invest since the beneficiaries of these tests are often not the purchaser themselves but instead the people around them who could become infected.

Technologies for Pandemic Defense, Convergent Research Sequencing Roadmap Group

Rapid, point-of-care metagenomic sequencing could help identify pandemics faster. There is little incentive for firms to invest in this kind of innovation if hospitals and other entities do not demand it—that’s where a pull mechanism could be most useful.

Mauricio Shiavo

Innovation in diagnostic tests for zoonotic diseases could enhance biosecurity, and the creation of greater commercial incentive to innovate in the space could help accelerate that innovation.

1Day Sooner

Researchers need a way to identify what features can trigger an immune response that blocks transmission, not just infection. This would have public health benefits beyond individual benefits to the patient. A pull mechanism could incentivize researchers to discover these “correlates of protection” that could be used to accelerate the development of vaccines and treatments in the case of a future pandemic.

Dendritic.bio

Early warning systems for pandemics could have outsized social benefits, giving public health authorities the lead time they need to mount a response before the problem grows out of hand. However, commercial incentives to create such systems are minute, as there are few potential buyers, resulting in inadequate private investment for innovation in the space. A pull mechanism, by creating greater market demand, could accelerate the development of crucial early detection systems.

GeneSys

A pull incentive could speed up the construction of an early warning system for waterborne pathogens. Currently, there is little commercial incentive to invest in such technology because there are few potential purchasers for such a product. However, the benefits of such a system on pandemic prevention could far exceed the costs.

Dognosis Technologies

Novel technologies like volatolomics—a passive and real-time measure already used in cancer treatment—could help catch disease outbreaks before they become pandemics. A pull incentive may be needed to incentivize investment, as there is little incentive for medical companies to look for pandemic applications of existing technologies.

Aqualert

Early pandemic detection—such as through sewage monitoring—is a vital social good, but there’s little commercial incentive for private firms to invest in innovation in this area.

Technologies for Pandemic Defense

Innovation is needed to create a pandemic early warning system, with large needed improvements for affordable and effective aerosol detection. Aerosol detection of pandemics is a public good, and hence,there’s little private demand for such a product. As a result, private firms may be under-incentivized in researching innovative techniques to improve our detection capabilities.

Violet Coalition (1Day Sooner, The OSLUV Project, and Convergent Research)

Shared indoor spaces are some of the highest risk places for pathogen transmission. Far-UVC technology could help reduce this channel, but there is little commercial incentive to develop it absent a clear, consistent, and bankable demand signal which is currently lacking. A pull mechanism could help stimulate greater research and development in this domain.

Lacombe França, Ellertson

A pull incentive to destroy pathogens in indoor air—such as far-UVC—could help rapidly reduce the transmission of airborne diseases. However,owners of shared indoor spaces have little private incentive to invest in purchasing such technology, meaning that there’s little commercial incentive to develop it. While research is currently highly promising, there is still much work left to be done that needs incentivizing.

Benjamin Stewart

Highly effective PPE may be necessary in a future pandemic, which could be even deadlier than COVID-19. Convincing essential workers to go to work during a deadlier pandemic would be near impossible without substantial improvements in PPE technology. However, there is little commercial incentive to invest in these products pre-pandemic when few are buying high-quality PPE products. A pull mechanism could create an incentive to invest in creating such a product now, before the emergency occurs.

Technologies for Pandemic Defense

Supply chains for PPE, like disposable respirators, are vulnerable to shocks in the case of a future pandemic, heightening the need to stockpile PPE before the emergency actually occurs. Unfortunately, there is little commercial incentive for private firms to invest in surplus supply before the emergency hits. A pull mechanism to incentivize the creation of easy-to-use, highly-effective PPE could thus have long-lasting benefits in preventing pandemics.

Vaishnav Sunil

Cost-effective powered air purifying respirators that sidestep the need to specially fit the entire population could be vital in the next pandemic, and a pull mechanism could incentivize researchers to innovate in the field sooner rather than later.

Crowd Funded Cures

COVID-19 demonstrated that existing drugs and medical innovations can often have uses far beyond their original intended purposes. However, patent rules often mean there is little commercial incentive for companies and researchers to find these novel but socially valuable uses (such as for pandemic outbreaks) for existing drugs. A pull mechanism could help rectify that.

Oscar Delaney

Tuberculosis, which kills 1.5 million people per year, is both a massive health challenge in its own right and could be used as a platform for future mutations or designed pathogens. However, the commercial incentive for innovation is limited by both the low ability-to-pay of many patients in low- and middle-income countries and the inability for pharmaceutical companies to make money off of limiting TB’s potential role in a future pandemic. A demand-pull incentive could help accelerate the creation of tools that combat tuberculosis.