Grantee Profile
Center for Health Market Innovations (CHMI)
Finding the Best Health Market Models for Developing Countries
“We believe that poor people in developing countries deserve high quality health care without having to pay so much that they go deeper into poverty; that’s why we launched CHMI (the Center for Health Market Innovations),” says Gina Lagomarsino, Principal and Managing Director at Results for Development Institute (R4D) who is leading the work of CHMI.
The Center for Health Market Innovations (CHMI) is a global network of partners that seeks to improve the functioning of health markets in developing countries with large numbers of private health care providers. CHMI works to accelerate the diffusion of health market innovations that lead to better health and financial protection for poor communities.
The CHMI has created a web-platform that serves as an interactive global knowledge portal facilitating the exchange of knowledge about health market innovations in developing countries and the creation of strategic linkages among key stakeholders.
“We have found programs that better organize fragmented health care providers—such as franchises and professional associations—and make it easier to create standards and provide training,” says Lagomarsino. The website also includes programs that educate patients to become more savvy consumers and use nnovative technologies that can reduce costs or improve access to care for people in remote areas.
Improving the performance of vast, unorganized health marketplaces will be no easy task, but it’s a goal worth pursuing.
This web platform will enable researchers, policymakers, implementers and funders to search through hundreds of profiled health market innovations. It allows stakeholders to contribute to the data by suggesting new programs for inclusion. CHMI also offers a funders database which provides information about donors and investors that fund these health organizations.
“CHMI provides an excellent opportunity to pull existing knowledge together, determine what reliable information can be collected, and determine what are truly best practices in this area,” says Onil Bhattacharyya, MD, PhD, clinician scientist at St. Michael's Hospital and assistant professor of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto.
By identifying and tracking the best programs around the world, CHMI will be able to help analyze and evaluate the data to determine what is working to improve health care for the poor in the developing world--and what is not working.
“Improving the performance of vast, unorganized health marketplaces will be no easy task,” says Lagomarsino. “But we think it’s a goal worth pursuing.”
The Center for Health Market Innovations was established with initial funding from the Rockefeller Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
To get started taking full advantage of the CHMI website, visit our Using the CHMI Website section and watch the video at the top.
