Informing the establishment of the WHO Global Observatory on Health Research and Development: a call for papers

Taghreed Adam, John-Arne Røttingen, Marie-Paule Kieny

In May 2013, WHO's Member States requested the WHO to establish a Global Observatory on Health Research and Development (R&D), as part of a strategic work-plan to promote innovation, build capacity, improve access and mobilize resources to address diseases that disproportionately affect the world's poorest countries.The rationale for establishing a Global Observatory on Health R&D is to provide a mechanism to monitor and analyse health R&D resource flows, product pipelines and research outputs, with a view to contributing to the identification of gaps to inform priority-setting for new R&D investments to be operationalised through a new global financing and coordination mechanism for health R&D and utilized by all stakeholders informing health research policy decisions in countries, civil society and the private sector.As one of the mechanisms to achieve the goals of the Global Observatory on Health R&D, WHO is launching a Call for Papers to be published as a Thematic Series in Health Policy Research and Systems to contribute state-of-the-art knowledge and innovative approaches to analyse, interpret and report on health R&D information; and to serve as a key resource to inform the future WHO-convened coordination mechanism that will be utilized to generate evidence-informed priorities for new R&D investments to be financed through a proposed new global financing and coordination mechanism for health R&D.