Despite recent advancements in lung cancer therapies, the prognosis for patients with advanced NSCLC remains poor, so innovative, non-invasive, sensitive and reliable biomarkers still need to be discovered and exploited.
A GPG perspective would argue that provision of adequate R&D related to diseases of the poor requires innovative collective action.
A subset of private health organizations, some called social enterprises, have developed novel approaches to increase the availability, affordability and quality of health care services to the poor through innovative health service delivery models.
If nations are to reduce the growing burden of chronic diseases and the widening health gap between rich and poor, then innovative approaches are required to empower and inform consumers, practitioners and policymakers.
Young entrepreneurs are trying to provide poor people with innovative services partly because they want to do good, but also because they see big gaps in the market.Revolution Foods is trying to wean young Americans off junk food by serving healthy school meals and providing advice on nutrition.
Culturally, car rental companies are non-technical and poor at finding innovative solutions as their business model is hugely dependent on their counters and agencies, namely for up sell," adds Kaddoura.
In areas where a majority of women are illiterate or where schooling is poor or interrupted, innovative methods to deliver health messages and improve pregnancy outcomes need to be developed, as demonstrated recently in Nepal [ 19].
At the 2008 Skoll World Forum at Oxford, Paul Farmer, co-founder of Partners in Health and University Professor at Harvard Medical School, wincefully said "we live in an era in which simply seeking to provide high-quality medical care to the world's poorest is considered innovative and entrepreneurial".
Mr Thaksin, who was deposed in a coup in 2006, is revered by his supporters as a populist hero who put the concerns of the poor first with his innovative social and economic programmes, especially in the countryside.
Whereas patients with good-risk features may be adequately managed by conventional salvage treatment, the remaining patients carry a very poor prognosis and require innovative and more aggressive approaches.
