Policies and incentives for promoting innovation in antibiotic research

ABSTRACT

High levels of pathogen resistance are rendering current antibiotics obsolete. Coupled with insufficient investment in discovering new treatments, multidrug-resistant infections are an increasingly urgent public health concern. To curb the growth of antibiotic resistance and prevent major morbidity and mortality from multidrug-resistant bacterial infections, the overuse of antibiotics must be addressed and research and development for antibiotics with novel mechanisms of action actively promoted. This requires appropriately designed incentives for health and regulatory systems, in addition to economic incentives to attract academic interest and industry investment. This book, commissioned by the Swedish Government from the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, analyses many proposed policies and incentive mechanisms and sheds light on the key issues that will help policy-makers reach informed, concrete decisions on how to avert this potential public health crisis.