Frugal Medicine: How ‘Cheap’ Medicine is Forging a New Path

In the United States health care accounts for 17.9 percent of GDP spending, the highest of anywhere in the world. While this statistic isn’t quite as high in other nations (China’s healthcare spending comprises 5.4 percent of GDP, Nigeria’s 6.1 percent, and Brazil’s weighs in at 9.3 percent), this fact does exemplify the desperate need for more affordable health care in the US and abroad.

Enter frugal medicine. Frugal medical innovation is a broad term used to describe low-cost diagnostic tools and technological equipment distributed at the Base of the Pyramid (BOP) to increase access to and quality of care in underserved and impoverished regions. Over the past decade there has been a boom in this space, especially in China and India which have undergone unprecedented economic expansion and growth in the tertiary (service) sector. From 1992-2005 annual growth in this sector in China and India was 6.2% and 10.2% respectively, and was a large trigger for the rapid consumerism and developmental growth of both countries.

Despite this growth there remained a large gap in medical care between economic classes, and cost of care stayed high. In response to this gap, as companies began focusing on low-cost innovations (technological improvements and devices) in other industries, they also focused on reducing the cost of medical care and equipment, making healthcare more accessible and affordable to all individuals (a movement similar to the development of more affordable, generic drugs in the US). In the Marketing Society’s Quarterly Journal, Melanie Howard discusses the spread of these ‘lower-cost alternatives”:

…just as education has helped fuel the success of the creative economy in the UK over the past decade, the educated there in the BRIC countries are now turning their minds to developing products and services that will offer the benefits of advanced consumerism at a fraction of the price, to satisfy the needs of those further down the food chain. Many of these new inventors and entrepreneurs from the emerging markets also appear to have questions of social justice and sustainability very much in their mind… In healthcare, stunning new ideas are reducing the cost of bringing advanced diagnostics and treatment to the masses.

Here are some examples of frugal medical innovations—these include both diagnostic tools that allow for quality of life improvements at a much lower price to patients (such as the low price prosthetic limbs sold by Jaipur Foot) and equipment that creates affordable access to healthier environments (like Professor Michael Gordon’s research into ways better access to nets and bug zappers can lower malaria rates in Ghana and Tanzania).

Jaipur Foot

The Jaipur Foot, first developed in 1968, provides prosthetic limbs to the poor for as little as USD. Innovations like these allow critical improvements to the lives of the world’s 25 million amputees.

Water Canary

Low-cost water filters, like those built and distributed by Water Canary, are helping to provide clean water to the over 1.1 billion people worldwide without access to sanitary drinking supplies.

Eye to Eye

Companies like i2i and CellScope are innovating ways to provide low-cost diagnostic tools to doctors in hospitals thousands of miles away from patients, improving healthcare access to those who live far from medical facilities.

Malaria prevention - nets and bug zappers

Could “virtual” mosquito nets comprised of infrared light protect billions from malaria? That’s the argument of Szabolcs Marka, an associate professor of physics at Columbia University.

Biosense

Diagnostic tools needn’t be expensive and only found in medical facilities: Indian company Biosense has been successful in helping to treat anemia and diabetes by bringing mobile, low-cost diagnostic devices to impoverished areas.