Global Health Security Innovation

Heyman et al. (Global health security: the wider lessons from the west African Ebola virus disease epidemic, vol 385. May 9, 2015 www.thelancet.com, 2015:1888) argues that, “the world is ill-prepared” to handle any “sustained and threatening public-health emergency”. Disease outbreaks such as Ebola SARS, and H1N1 challenged national and global response mechanisms. The emergence of these disease outbreaks and their influence globally has sparked a renewed attention to global health security. In the Chatham House report ‘Preparing for High Impact, Low Probability Events’, Lee et al. (Preparing for high-impact, low-probability events: lessons from Eyjafjallajökull. Chatham House Report, January 2012:vii) ‘…found that governments and businesses remain unprepared for such events … the frequency of ‘high-impact, low-probability’ (HILP) events in the last decade signals the emergence of a new ‘normal’. This calls for innovation on an unprecedented level to manage such global health threats as they represent a global health security challenge. This chapter explores the foundations of the innovation space as it applies to global health security. The wicked nature of global health security points to how innovation and complexity framing go hand in hand in dealing with such global issues.