Designing fit-for-purpose regulation for evolving healthcare systems

Healthcare markets in low- and middle-income countries (LMICS) are undergoing dramatic change, with private sector expansion, new business models and growing foreign investment. Regulation in these countries is not responsive or risk-based and is ill-suited to manage these challenges.

We aim to understand the challenges that recent developments in LMIC healthcare markets pose for effective regulation. We will review recent trends in the private sector and regulation systems in three LMICs with rapidly changing healthcare markets. We will assemble a group of scholars and policy makers with expertise in regulatory theory and implementation in middle- and high-income countries. We will debate appropriate theoretical frameworks and methods for studying regulatory developments, and consider what concepts and lessons might be relevant to LMICs, taking into account differences in resources, institutions, health systems and history.

We will create a network of scholars, identify critical research questions and produce an agenda-setting paper and a proposal for a larger project.