title: Frugal innovation in medicine for low resource settings.
abstract: Whilst it is clear that technology is crucial to advance healthcare: innovation in medicine is not just about high-tech tools, new procedures or genome discoveries. In constrained environments, healthcare providers often create unexpected solutions to provide adequate healthcare to patients. These inexpensive but effective frugal innovations may be imperfect, but they have the power to ensure that health is within reach of everyone. Frugal innovations are not limited to low-resource settings: ingenuous ideas can be adapted to offer simpler and disruptive alternatives to usual care all around the world, representing the concept of "reverse innovation". In this article, we discuss the different types of frugal innovations, illustrated with examples from the literature, and argue for the need to give voice to this neglected type of innovation in medicine.
authors.affiliation: Department of General Medicine, Paris Diderot University, Paris, France. thi.tran-viet@htd.aphp.fr.|Centre de Recherche en Epidémiologie et Statistiques, INSERM U1153, Paris, France. thi.tran-viet@htd.aphp.fr.|Centre d'Épidémiologie Clinique, Hôpital Hôtel-Dieu, Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris, 1 place du Parvis Notre-Dame, Paris, 75181, France. thi.tran-viet@htd.aphp.fr.
authors.forename: Viet-Thi
authors.initials: VT
authors.lastname: Tran
authors.affiliation: Centre de Recherche en Epidémiologie et Statistiques, INSERM U1153, Paris, France.|Centre d'Épidémiologie Clinique, Hôpital Hôtel-Dieu, Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris, 1 place du Parvis Notre-Dame, Paris, 75181, France.|Paris Descartes University, Paris, France.|Department of Epidemiology, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, New York, NY, USA.
authors.forename: Philippe
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Ravaud
mesh_terms: D003695:Delivery of Health Care / Q000191:economics / Q000639:trends; D004059:Diffusion of Innovation; D006295:Health Resources / Q000191:economics* / Q000639:trends; D006801:Humans; D008511:Medicine / Q000639:trends
keywords: Developing countries; Diffusion of innovation; Global health