World Health Organization Methodology to Prioritize Emerging Infectious Diseases in Need of Research and Development

Abstract

The World Health Organization R&D Blueprint aims to accelerate the availability of medical technologies during epidemics by focusing on a list of prioritized emerging diseases for which medical countermeasures are insufficient or nonexistent. The prioritization process has 3 components: a Delphi process to narrow down a list of potential priority diseases, a multicriteria decision analysis to rank the short list of diseases, and a final Delphi round to arrive at a final list of 10 diseases. A group of international experts applied this process in January 2017, resulting in a list of 10 priority diseases. The robustness of the list was tested by performing a sensitivity analysis. The new process corrected major shortcomings in the pre–R&D Blueprint approach to disease prioritization and increased confidence in the results.

The WHO R&D Blueprint: 2018 review of emerging infectious diseases requiring urgent research and development efforts

“…After its first full implementation, WHO carried out an assessment of the prioritization methodology. This assessment demonstrated: (a) the ranking produced was robust across different sensitivity scenarios; (b) similar group ranking was generated using three different approaches; and (c) the criterion "availability of medical countermeasures" had very little impact on the final ranking despite a high weight (Mehand et al, 2018;WHO, 2017b). As a result, the prioritization criteria and subcriteria were updated (Table 1).…”

“…Following their revision in light of feedback, insights and recommendations received at the meeting, the tools and models were subsequently validated via a silence procedure in January 2017. The resulting methodology was published on the WHO website (WHO, 2017a) and a peer-reviewed journal (Mehand et al, 2018).…”

“…Participants used the online survey tool developed by WHO to compare how the short-listed diseases corresponded with 29 factors of 7 different criteria contained in the prioritization methodology. The results were analysed using the AHP MCDA approach detailed in the prioritization methodology (more details in the peer-reviewed methodology and application (Mehand et al, 2018)). WHO Blueprint secretariat presented an overview of the results which was discussed and reviewed by the Committee.…”

“…Panel B shows the results obtained using the arithmetic average of the comparison values collected through the online questionnaire. The discordance internal are calculated through error propagation technique and presented in panel B (Mehand et al, 2018). (P1 = Ebola, P2 = Marburg, P3 = MERS, P4= SARS, P5=Lassa, P6= Nipah, P7 = Rift Valley Fever, P8 = Zika, P9= Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever, P10 = Severe Fever with Thrombocytopenia Syndrome, P11 = non-polio enteroviruses).…”

Precision public health to inhibit the contagion of disease and move toward a future in which microbes spread health

“…Powerful global health actors, that for example include the World Health Organization [94], Wellcome Trust [95], World Bank [96] and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation [97], have now developed action plans, protocols, policy documents and research programs that address some current needs and tentatively cover emerging and future priorities. However, we feel there is much they could still do in leading a conversation about the future of public health, and how interventions and technology can drive both subtle and radical transformations in this particular landscape.…”