To overcome funding challenges, global health organizations and their donors have developed financing tools, such as the advance market commitment (AMC), debt buy-downs, and pooled funds from tax revenue, that blend capital from the public and private sectors. The result has been great momentum toward models that can maximize impact and potentially generate returns for investors. Yet the creation and implementation of such models has been slow and labor-intensive. There has been measurable success, but also an urgent need to design the next generation of innovative financing products.

To this end, the Milken Institute, with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, convened a Financial Innovations Lab® to map current and potential models with the goal of leveraging traditional sources of aid to attract private-sector investment and increase sustainable funding for R&D. With the global health funding landscape broad and diverse, the Lab focused on models that would engage a new tier of investor in terms of both financial capacity and risk appetite for financial products across asset classes. The group of market leaders and experts discussed the barriers to implementation, as well as potential solutions.