Active Cancer Public Health & Healthcare

Access to Medicine Foundation

Funder Wellcome Charity-funded
Recipient organisation Access to Medicine Foundation
Funding £1.9M
Period Oct 2024 — Sept 2027

In plain English

AI plain-English summary

The Access to Medicine Foundation is using its unique access to pharmaceutical company data to create public scorecards that hold drugmakers accountable for getting essential medicines to people in low- and middle-income countries. This matters because millions of people in these regions lack access to basic antibiotics, antifungals, and diagnostics, while drug-resistant infections are spreading. The pharmaceutical industry has little incentive to serve these markets, and until now, no independent body has systematically tracked what companies are actually doing. The Foundation fills that gap by turning proprietary company data into transparent, publicly available research. If this work succeeds, it will change how global health stakeholders—governments, investors, NGOs—measure and pressure pharmaceutical companies. The flagship Access to Medicine Index and the Antimicrobial Resistance Benchmark will become gold-standard tools that push companies to expand access and invest in new antibiotics and rapid diagnostics. This is not fundamental science; it is applied accountability research that directly targets a broken market dynamic. The result could be more medicines reaching the people who need them, and slower emergence of drug-resistant infections worldwide.

View original technical description
The Access to Medicine Foundation (ATMF) is an independent non-profit organisation that seeks to transform the healthcare ecosystem by motivating and mobilising companies to expand access to their essential healthcare products in low-and middle-income countries and curb the spread of drug resistant infections. By virtue of our longstanding relations with R&D companies, ATMF has had access to unique company data that no other organisation has been privy to. ATMF continues to utilise this data to provide publicly available research findings that increase transparency and thereby accountability across the pharmaceutical industry. By harnessing the combined power of our innovative research, and dynamic multi-stakeholders’ engagement, we are creating gold-standard tools for measuring companies' access efforts that integral global health stakeholders are utilising to push the needle forward. Determined to build on the momentum of ATMF's theory of change, we will utilise this proposal to support our flagship programme - the Access to Medicine Index, and the Antimicrobial Resistance Programme and its benchmark - the first independent analysis of pharmaceutical company action against antimicrobial resistance. Additionally, this will support thematic studies on topical issues like the industry's R&D efforts for antibiotics and antifungals as well as novel and rapid diagnostics for infectious diseases.

View the original record at the funder ↗

Researchers

Margo Warren (EPMC Awardee)Marijn Verhoef (EPMC Awardee)

Related Research

Grants with similar aims, by meaning.

Access to Medicines Foundation on AMR
Accelerating policy action for a future with sustainable access and use of antimicrobials for all
AMPQuest - Journeying to new horizons in treating drug-resistant infections.
Developing Membrane Targeting Antimicrobial Lipo-Peptoids by Modular Peptidomimicry and High Throughput Imaging
Enabling novel penicillin-binding-protein high throughput screens

Original classification

Discretionary Award

Plain English summaries and category classifications on this site are generated by AI and may not perfectly reflect the original research.