A greater global commitment to address diseases that primarily affect people in developing countries has resulted in many governments and organizations, public and private, investing heavily in the development of new public health technologies—new vaccines, medicines, and diagnostics—to prevent and treat these diseases. For example, the Global Plan to Stop TB 2006–2015 estimated that for tuberculosis (TB) there were 27 medicines, 15 diagnostics, and eight vaccines in the pipeline at various stages ranging from product development to field trials.

In our experience, ensuring the successful introduction of new health products, including medicines, depends on “managing with the end in mind.” That is, managing the entire product development and dissemination process with a clear vision of each of the critical success factors to ensure prompt, widespread, and sustainable introduction and uptake of a new medicine, diagnostic tool, or other health technology.

Too often, product development and dissemination is managed one step at a time: develop the product, then work to get it accepted by the public health community, then develop quality standards, then talk to country disease control programs, then talk to potential manufacturers, then consider registration, and so on. This results in needless delays and even failure in achieving widespread use of a promising new technology.

The Strengthening Pharmaceutical Systems (SPS) Program is working to ensure that more focus is placed on actively managing and coordinating all facets of product development and dissemination, starting at the beginning of the process. SPS will work with partners to use a framework that lays out the key processes that need to be managed and then develop a plan with sufficient flexibility to adjust to the unexpected, yet inevitable, problems along the way to introducing a new public health technology in resource-limited settings.