![\"\"](\"https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Expanding-Equitable-Access-to-Oncology-Treatment-in-l-LMICs-1-1024x512.png\" "\\"Expanding")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The scale of the challenge<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\nNCDs account for 74% of all deaths worldwide and 86% of premature deaths in LMICs.<\/a> At the same time, nearly half of the global population has little to no access to essential diagnostic tools, including laboratory diagnostics and diagnostic imaging.
For diabetes alone, only 48% of low-income countries report blood glucose measurement technology as being generally available<\/a> and one in every three people with diabetes in LMICs has never had their blood glucose measured at all.<\/a>
These are system gaps, and the cost of leaving them unaddressed falls on patients and health budgets alike.
An estimated 80% of NCDs are preventable. Investing in the cost-effective interventions that WHO has identified as “Best Buys” could prevent 8.2 million premature deaths between 2018 and 2030 and generate USD 350 billion in economic growth. Every dollar invested in NCD prevention and care in LMICs can deliver a return of USD 7.\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0
Diagnostics sit at the foundation of that investment. Without early detection and monitoring, treatment cannot be targeted, complications cannot be prevented, and health systems end up managing crises rather than conditions.
Strategic investment in diagnostics and their accuracy could save up to 18% of healthcare expenses<\/a>, resources that can be redirected towards treatment and broader system strengthening.\u00a0
So why, given all of this, does access remain so limited in practice?<\/p>\n\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Beyond price and availability: three persistent barriers<\/strong><\/h2><\/div>\n\n\nResearch has identified nine market failures as key threats to diagnostic supply security in LMICs<\/a>: limited investment, insufficient workforce, deterring regulations, inefficient purchasing and procurement, operational inefficiencies, limited infrastructure and technology, high costs, low trust, and limited government and policy support.
No single intervention addresses all nine, but three barriers consistently emerge across contexts, and understanding them points to where action is most needed.<\/p>\n\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fragmented demand and incompatible supply<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nProcurement teams across LMICs frequently navigate a landscape of incompatible products: glucometers whose strips are unavailable locally for the brand in stock, devices that differ across facilities within the same district, and consumables that run out before the next order cycle.
In some settings, patients end up managing multiple devices because no single brand is reliably stocked.
This is not a product quality issue, but a system coherence one. One that erodes clinical reliability and makes sustainable procurement difficult to justify.
It also reflects a structural gap. Faith-based organisations and community-level facilities deliver a significant share of primary care in many regions, yet they are often excluded from procurement planning. As a result, supply models fail to reflect how care is actually delivered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The policy-to-procurement gap<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\nDiagnostics that are not included in national NCD strategies, treatment guidelines, or health benefit packages tend not to be procured systematically<\/a>. <\/span>Even where they are included, budget allocation does not always follow, leaving procurement inconsistent in practice.<\/span><\/p>\n
Without an institutional mandate, procurement teams have limited basis to order. Without dedicated financing or reimbursement mechanisms, even well-motivated facilities face structural barriers.<\/span><\/p>\n
This challenge is compounded by limited data. Many LMICs lack the health information infrastructure to track diagnostic availability and use, even in tertiary hospitals.<\/a> And without that visibility, it is hard to justify budget allocation or policy integration.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThis challenge is compounded by limited data. Many LMICs lack the health information infrastructure to track diagnostic availability and use, even in tertiary hospitals. And without that visibility, it is hard to justify budget allocation or policy integration.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Diagnostic literacy, training, and maintenance<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\nEven where devices are available and policy frameworks are in place, a third barrier remains. Diagnostic literacy among frontline health workers (the knowledge, confidence, and protocols to integrate testing into routine care) is often underdeveloped. Maintenance systems are frequently absent. Training tends to happen once, at device delivery, rather than being built into how facilities operate over time.
The result is predictable: devices sit unused, degrade faster than expected, or produce results that are not acted upon. Not because the technology is wrong, but because the clinical and operational infrastructure to support it was never put in place.
Access to a device is not the same as access to a diagnosis.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
What it takes to move from availability to use<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\nProgrammes that make measurable progress on NCD diagnostic access, including country-level initiatives supported by the Norway NCD Flagship Initiative<\/a> in Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Myanmar and Nepal, tend to share a common approach.
Where diagnostics are part of care delivery, not as standalone products. They are specified in treatment protocols, tracked alongside clinical outcomes, and included in budgets from the outset. This ensures they are not deprioritised when resources are constrained.
Workforce capacity is addressed in parallel. Training and technical support are embedded into routine operations, rather than delivered as isolated interventions.
Procurement models also extend beyond central purchasing. Demand is pooled across district hospitals, community health posts, and faith-based facilities, creating more stable volumes and ensuring continuity of supply at the point of care.
These are not expensive conditions to create. They are organisational and political choices, requiring coordination across ministries, procurement bodies, and implementing partners, that no single actor can deliver alone.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
From access to impact<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\nThis is the logic behind NCDconnect: aligning diagnostic access with how procurement and care delivery actually function in LMICs.
The platform brings together 40 quality-assured NCD diagnostics and medical devices across diabetes, cardiovascular disease, oncology, and respiratory care. These are supplied under long-term, pre-negotiated agreements designed for procurement realities – low minimum order quantities, reliable supply, and pricing benchmarked against independent market analyses.
Within this model, partnerships play a structuring role. A subset of 14 priority diabetes diagnostics is integrated through our partnership with FIND<\/a>, supporting more consistent and standardised care. At the same time, NCDconnect builds on the infrastructure of its parent organisation, IDA Foundation<\/a>, bringing established procurement and quality assurance systems that reach from central medical stores to faith-based health facilities.
This combination of pricing discipline and system design translates into measurable efficiency gains. We compared NCDconnect\u2019s negotiated terms against a 2023 meta-analysis from the University of Geneva, which compiled real market prices for diagnostics across 51 LMICs. The result: our not-for-profit model delivers median savings of 9% on blood glucose monitors and 79% for test strips.<\/a> Resources that can be redirected towards patient care.
In practice, this means working alongside ministries of health, coalitions, NGOs, and local procurement teams to ensure diagnostics are not only available, but embedded into functioning systems of care.
If that is a challenge you are working on, we would be glad to think it through together.\u00a0<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The devices are available. The prices are negotiated. So why aren\u2019t patients benefiting? Across low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), significant progress has been made in expanding access to noncommunicable disease (NCDs) diagnostics. Devices have been sourced. Prices have been negotiated. Quality assurance frameworks exist. And yet the patients who need these tools are not benefiting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":2640,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[47,51,29,1],"tags":[66,43,65,67,40,17,38],"class_list":["post-2634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-accesstocare","category-ncd-solutions","category-news","category-uncategorized","tag-access-to-medical-devices","tag-lmics","tag-medical-devices","tag-medical-diagnostics","tag-ncdconnect","tag-procurement","tag-sourcing"],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device.png",400,200,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device-150x75.png",150,75,true],"medium":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device-300x150.png",300,150,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device.png",400,200,false],"large":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device.png",400,200,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device.png",400,200,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device.png",400,200,false],"trp-custom-language-flag":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device-18x9.png",18,9,true],"et-pb-post-main-image":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device.png",400,200,false],"et-pb-post-main-image-fullwidth":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device.png",400,200,false],"et-pb-portfolio-image":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device.png",400,200,false],"et-pb-portfolio-module-image":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device.png",400,200,false],"et-pb-portfolio-image-single":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device.png",400,200,false],"et-pb-gallery-module-image-portrait":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device.png",400,200,false],"et-pb-post-main-image-fullwidth-large":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device.png",400,200,false],"et-pb-image--responsive--desktop":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device.png",400,200,false],"et-pb-image--responsive--tablet":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device.png",400,200,false],"et-pb-image--responsive--phone":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device.png",400,200,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"Esme Fowler-Mason","author_link":"https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/en\/author\/esmefm\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"The devices are available. The prices are negotiated. So why aren\u2019t patients benefiting? Across low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), significant progress has been made in expanding access to noncommunicable disease (NCDs) diagnostics. Devices have been sourced. Prices have been negotiated. Quality assurance frameworks exist. And yet the patients who need these tools are not benefiting…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2634"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2643,"href":"https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2634\/revisions\/2643"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
For diabetes alone, only 48% of low-income countries report blood glucose measurement technology as being generally available<\/a> and one in every three people with diabetes in LMICs has never had their blood glucose measured at all.<\/a>
These are system gaps, and the cost of leaving them unaddressed falls on patients and health budgets alike.
An estimated 80% of NCDs are preventable. Investing in the cost-effective interventions that WHO has identified as “Best Buys” could prevent 8.2 million premature deaths between 2018 and 2030 and generate USD 350 billion in economic growth. Every dollar invested in NCD prevention and care in LMICs can deliver a return of USD 7.\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0
Diagnostics sit at the foundation of that investment. Without early detection and monitoring, treatment cannot be targeted, complications cannot be prevented, and health systems end up managing crises rather than conditions.
Strategic investment in diagnostics and their accuracy could save up to 18% of healthcare expenses<\/a>, resources that can be redirected towards treatment and broader system strengthening.\u00a0
So why, given all of this, does access remain so limited in practice?<\/p>\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Beyond price and availability: three persistent barriers<\/strong><\/h2><\/div>\n\n\nResearch has identified nine market failures as key threats to diagnostic supply security in LMICs<\/a>: limited investment, insufficient workforce, deterring regulations, inefficient purchasing and procurement, operational inefficiencies, limited infrastructure and technology, high costs, low trust, and limited government and policy support.
No single intervention addresses all nine, but three barriers consistently emerge across contexts, and understanding them points to where action is most needed.<\/p>\n\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fragmented demand and incompatible supply<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nProcurement teams across LMICs frequently navigate a landscape of incompatible products: glucometers whose strips are unavailable locally for the brand in stock, devices that differ across facilities within the same district, and consumables that run out before the next order cycle.
In some settings, patients end up managing multiple devices because no single brand is reliably stocked.
This is not a product quality issue, but a system coherence one. One that erodes clinical reliability and makes sustainable procurement difficult to justify.
It also reflects a structural gap. Faith-based organisations and community-level facilities deliver a significant share of primary care in many regions, yet they are often excluded from procurement planning. As a result, supply models fail to reflect how care is actually delivered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The policy-to-procurement gap<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\nDiagnostics that are not included in national NCD strategies, treatment guidelines, or health benefit packages tend not to be procured systematically<\/a>. <\/span>Even where they are included, budget allocation does not always follow, leaving procurement inconsistent in practice.<\/span><\/p>\n
Without an institutional mandate, procurement teams have limited basis to order. Without dedicated financing or reimbursement mechanisms, even well-motivated facilities face structural barriers.<\/span><\/p>\n
This challenge is compounded by limited data. Many LMICs lack the health information infrastructure to track diagnostic availability and use, even in tertiary hospitals.<\/a> And without that visibility, it is hard to justify budget allocation or policy integration.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThis challenge is compounded by limited data. Many LMICs lack the health information infrastructure to track diagnostic availability and use, even in tertiary hospitals. And without that visibility, it is hard to justify budget allocation or policy integration.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Diagnostic literacy, training, and maintenance<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\nEven where devices are available and policy frameworks are in place, a third barrier remains. Diagnostic literacy among frontline health workers (the knowledge, confidence, and protocols to integrate testing into routine care) is often underdeveloped. Maintenance systems are frequently absent. Training tends to happen once, at device delivery, rather than being built into how facilities operate over time.
The result is predictable: devices sit unused, degrade faster than expected, or produce results that are not acted upon. Not because the technology is wrong, but because the clinical and operational infrastructure to support it was never put in place.
Access to a device is not the same as access to a diagnosis.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
What it takes to move from availability to use<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\nProgrammes that make measurable progress on NCD diagnostic access, including country-level initiatives supported by the Norway NCD Flagship Initiative<\/a> in Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Myanmar and Nepal, tend to share a common approach.
Where diagnostics are part of care delivery, not as standalone products. They are specified in treatment protocols, tracked alongside clinical outcomes, and included in budgets from the outset. This ensures they are not deprioritised when resources are constrained.
Workforce capacity is addressed in parallel. Training and technical support are embedded into routine operations, rather than delivered as isolated interventions.
Procurement models also extend beyond central purchasing. Demand is pooled across district hospitals, community health posts, and faith-based facilities, creating more stable volumes and ensuring continuity of supply at the point of care.
These are not expensive conditions to create. They are organisational and political choices, requiring coordination across ministries, procurement bodies, and implementing partners, that no single actor can deliver alone.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
From access to impact<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\nThis is the logic behind NCDconnect: aligning diagnostic access with how procurement and care delivery actually function in LMICs.
The platform brings together 40 quality-assured NCD diagnostics and medical devices across diabetes, cardiovascular disease, oncology, and respiratory care. These are supplied under long-term, pre-negotiated agreements designed for procurement realities – low minimum order quantities, reliable supply, and pricing benchmarked against independent market analyses.
Within this model, partnerships play a structuring role. A subset of 14 priority diabetes diagnostics is integrated through our partnership with FIND<\/a>, supporting more consistent and standardised care. At the same time, NCDconnect builds on the infrastructure of its parent organisation, IDA Foundation<\/a>, bringing established procurement and quality assurance systems that reach from central medical stores to faith-based health facilities.
This combination of pricing discipline and system design translates into measurable efficiency gains. We compared NCDconnect\u2019s negotiated terms against a 2023 meta-analysis from the University of Geneva, which compiled real market prices for diagnostics across 51 LMICs. The result: our not-for-profit model delivers median savings of 9% on blood glucose monitors and 79% for test strips.<\/a> Resources that can be redirected towards patient care.
In practice, this means working alongside ministries of health, coalitions, NGOs, and local procurement teams to ensure diagnostics are not only available, but embedded into functioning systems of care.
If that is a challenge you are working on, we would be glad to think it through together.\u00a0<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The devices are available. The prices are negotiated. So why aren\u2019t patients benefiting? Across low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), significant progress has been made in expanding access to noncommunicable disease (NCDs) diagnostics. Devices have been sourced. Prices have been negotiated. Quality assurance frameworks exist. And yet the patients who need these tools are not benefiting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":2640,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[47,51,29,1],"tags":[66,43,65,67,40,17,38],"class_list":["post-2634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-accesstocare","category-ncd-solutions","category-news","category-uncategorized","tag-access-to-medical-devices","tag-lmics","tag-medical-devices","tag-medical-diagnostics","tag-ncdconnect","tag-procurement","tag-sourcing"],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device.png",400,200,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device-150x75.png",150,75,true],"medium":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device-300x150.png",300,150,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device.png",400,200,false],"large":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device.png",400,200,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device.png",400,200,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device.png",400,200,false],"trp-custom-language-flag":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device-18x9.png",18,9,true],"et-pb-post-main-image":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device.png",400,200,false],"et-pb-post-main-image-fullwidth":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device.png",400,200,false],"et-pb-portfolio-image":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device.png",400,200,false],"et-pb-portfolio-module-image":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device.png",400,200,false],"et-pb-portfolio-image-single":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device.png",400,200,false],"et-pb-gallery-module-image-portrait":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device.png",400,200,false],"et-pb-post-main-image-fullwidth-large":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device.png",400,200,false],"et-pb-image--responsive--desktop":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device.png",400,200,false],"et-pb-image--responsive--tablet":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device.png",400,200,false],"et-pb-image--responsive--phone":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device.png",400,200,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"Esme Fowler-Mason","author_link":"https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/en\/author\/esmefm\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"The devices are available. The prices are negotiated. So why aren\u2019t patients benefiting? Across low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), significant progress has been made in expanding access to noncommunicable disease (NCDs) diagnostics. Devices have been sourced. Prices have been negotiated. Quality assurance frameworks exist. And yet the patients who need these tools are not benefiting…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2634"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2643,"href":"https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2634\/revisions\/2643"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
No single intervention addresses all nine, but three barriers consistently emerge across contexts, and understanding them points to where action is most needed.<\/p>\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fragmented demand and incompatible supply<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nProcurement teams across LMICs frequently navigate a landscape of incompatible products: glucometers whose strips are unavailable locally for the brand in stock, devices that differ across facilities within the same district, and consumables that run out before the next order cycle.
In some settings, patients end up managing multiple devices because no single brand is reliably stocked.
This is not a product quality issue, but a system coherence one. One that erodes clinical reliability and makes sustainable procurement difficult to justify.
It also reflects a structural gap. Faith-based organisations and community-level facilities deliver a significant share of primary care in many regions, yet they are often excluded from procurement planning. As a result, supply models fail to reflect how care is actually delivered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The policy-to-procurement gap<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\nDiagnostics that are not included in national NCD strategies, treatment guidelines, or health benefit packages tend not to be procured systematically<\/a>. <\/span>Even where they are included, budget allocation does not always follow, leaving procurement inconsistent in practice.<\/span><\/p>\n
Without an institutional mandate, procurement teams have limited basis to order. Without dedicated financing or reimbursement mechanisms, even well-motivated facilities face structural barriers.<\/span><\/p>\n
This challenge is compounded by limited data. Many LMICs lack the health information infrastructure to track diagnostic availability and use, even in tertiary hospitals.<\/a> And without that visibility, it is hard to justify budget allocation or policy integration.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThis challenge is compounded by limited data. Many LMICs lack the health information infrastructure to track diagnostic availability and use, even in tertiary hospitals. And without that visibility, it is hard to justify budget allocation or policy integration.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Diagnostic literacy, training, and maintenance<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\nEven where devices are available and policy frameworks are in place, a third barrier remains. Diagnostic literacy among frontline health workers (the knowledge, confidence, and protocols to integrate testing into routine care) is often underdeveloped. Maintenance systems are frequently absent. Training tends to happen once, at device delivery, rather than being built into how facilities operate over time.
The result is predictable: devices sit unused, degrade faster than expected, or produce results that are not acted upon. Not because the technology is wrong, but because the clinical and operational infrastructure to support it was never put in place.
Access to a device is not the same as access to a diagnosis.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
What it takes to move from availability to use<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\nProgrammes that make measurable progress on NCD diagnostic access, including country-level initiatives supported by the Norway NCD Flagship Initiative<\/a> in Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Myanmar and Nepal, tend to share a common approach.
Where diagnostics are part of care delivery, not as standalone products. They are specified in treatment protocols, tracked alongside clinical outcomes, and included in budgets from the outset. This ensures they are not deprioritised when resources are constrained.
Workforce capacity is addressed in parallel. Training and technical support are embedded into routine operations, rather than delivered as isolated interventions.
Procurement models also extend beyond central purchasing. Demand is pooled across district hospitals, community health posts, and faith-based facilities, creating more stable volumes and ensuring continuity of supply at the point of care.
These are not expensive conditions to create. They are organisational and political choices, requiring coordination across ministries, procurement bodies, and implementing partners, that no single actor can deliver alone.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
From access to impact<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\nThis is the logic behind NCDconnect: aligning diagnostic access with how procurement and care delivery actually function in LMICs.
The platform brings together 40 quality-assured NCD diagnostics and medical devices across diabetes, cardiovascular disease, oncology, and respiratory care. These are supplied under long-term, pre-negotiated agreements designed for procurement realities – low minimum order quantities, reliable supply, and pricing benchmarked against independent market analyses.
Within this model, partnerships play a structuring role. A subset of 14 priority diabetes diagnostics is integrated through our partnership with FIND<\/a>, supporting more consistent and standardised care. At the same time, NCDconnect builds on the infrastructure of its parent organisation, IDA Foundation<\/a>, bringing established procurement and quality assurance systems that reach from central medical stores to faith-based health facilities.
This combination of pricing discipline and system design translates into measurable efficiency gains. We compared NCDconnect\u2019s negotiated terms against a 2023 meta-analysis from the University of Geneva, which compiled real market prices for diagnostics across 51 LMICs. The result: our not-for-profit model delivers median savings of 9% on blood glucose monitors and 79% for test strips.<\/a> Resources that can be redirected towards patient care.
In practice, this means working alongside ministries of health, coalitions, NGOs, and local procurement teams to ensure diagnostics are not only available, but embedded into functioning systems of care.
If that is a challenge you are working on, we would be glad to think it through together.\u00a0<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The devices are available. The prices are negotiated. So why aren\u2019t patients benefiting? Across low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), significant progress has been made in expanding access to noncommunicable disease (NCDs) diagnostics. Devices have been sourced. Prices have been negotiated. Quality assurance frameworks exist. And yet the patients who need these tools are not benefiting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":2640,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[47,51,29,1],"tags":[66,43,65,67,40,17,38],"class_list":["post-2634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-accesstocare","category-ncd-solutions","category-news","category-uncategorized","tag-access-to-medical-devices","tag-lmics","tag-medical-devices","tag-medical-diagnostics","tag-ncdconnect","tag-procurement","tag-sourcing"],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device.png",400,200,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device-150x75.png",150,75,true],"medium":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device-300x150.png",300,150,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device.png",400,200,false],"large":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device.png",400,200,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device.png",400,200,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device.png",400,200,false],"trp-custom-language-flag":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device-18x9.png",18,9,true],"et-pb-post-main-image":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device.png",400,200,false],"et-pb-post-main-image-fullwidth":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device.png",400,200,false],"et-pb-portfolio-image":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device.png",400,200,false],"et-pb-portfolio-module-image":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device.png",400,200,false],"et-pb-portfolio-image-single":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device.png",400,200,false],"et-pb-gallery-module-image-portrait":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device.png",400,200,false],"et-pb-post-main-image-fullwidth-large":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device.png",400,200,false],"et-pb-image--responsive--desktop":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device.png",400,200,false],"et-pb-image--responsive--tablet":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device.png",400,200,false],"et-pb-image--responsive--phone":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device.png",400,200,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"Esme Fowler-Mason","author_link":"https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/en\/author\/esmefm\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"The devices are available. The prices are negotiated. So why aren\u2019t patients benefiting? Across low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), significant progress has been made in expanding access to noncommunicable disease (NCDs) diagnostics. Devices have been sourced. Prices have been negotiated. Quality assurance frameworks exist. And yet the patients who need these tools are not benefiting…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2634"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2643,"href":"https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2634\/revisions\/2643"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
In some settings, patients end up managing multiple devices because no single brand is reliably stocked.
This is not a product quality issue, but a system coherence one. One that erodes clinical reliability and makes sustainable procurement difficult to justify.
It also reflects a structural gap. Faith-based organisations and community-level facilities deliver a significant share of primary care in many regions, yet they are often excluded from procurement planning. As a result, supply models fail to reflect how care is actually delivered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Diagnostics that are not included in national NCD strategies, treatment guidelines, or health benefit packages tend not to be procured systematically<\/a>. <\/span>Even where they are included, budget allocation does not always follow, leaving procurement inconsistent in practice.<\/span><\/p>\n This challenge is compounded by limited data. Many LMICs lack the health information infrastructure to track diagnostic availability and use, even in tertiary hospitals. And without that visibility, it is hard to justify budget allocation or policy integration.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Even where devices are available and policy frameworks are in place, a third barrier remains. Diagnostic literacy among frontline health workers (the knowledge, confidence, and protocols to integrate testing into routine care) is often underdeveloped. Maintenance systems are frequently absent. Training tends to happen once, at device delivery, rather than being built into how facilities operate over time. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n Programmes that make measurable progress on NCD diagnostic access, including country-level initiatives supported by the Norway NCD Flagship Initiative<\/a> in Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Myanmar and Nepal, tend to share a common approach. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n This is the logic behind NCDconnect: aligning diagnostic access with how procurement and care delivery actually function in LMICs. The devices are available. The prices are negotiated. So why aren\u2019t patients benefiting? Across low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), significant progress has been made in expanding access to noncommunicable disease (NCDs) diagnostics. Devices have been sourced. Prices have been negotiated. Quality assurance frameworks exist. And yet the patients who need these tools are not benefiting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":2640,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[47,51,29,1],"tags":[66,43,65,67,40,17,38],"class_list":["post-2634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-accesstocare","category-ncd-solutions","category-news","category-uncategorized","tag-access-to-medical-devices","tag-lmics","tag-medical-devices","tag-medical-diagnostics","tag-ncdconnect","tag-procurement","tag-sourcing"],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device.png",400,200,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device-150x75.png",150,75,true],"medium":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device-300x150.png",300,150,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device.png",400,200,false],"large":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device.png",400,200,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device.png",400,200,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device.png",400,200,false],"trp-custom-language-flag":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device-18x9.png",18,9,true],"et-pb-post-main-image":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device.png",400,200,false],"et-pb-post-main-image-fullwidth":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device.png",400,200,false],"et-pb-portfolio-image":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device.png",400,200,false],"et-pb-portfolio-module-image":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device.png",400,200,false],"et-pb-portfolio-image-single":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device.png",400,200,false],"et-pb-gallery-module-image-portrait":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device.png",400,200,false],"et-pb-post-main-image-fullwidth-large":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device.png",400,200,false],"et-pb-image--responsive--desktop":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device.png",400,200,false],"et-pb-image--responsive--tablet":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device.png",400,200,false],"et-pb-image--responsive--phone":["https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/NCDconnect-Medical-Device.png",400,200,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"Esme Fowler-Mason","author_link":"https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/en\/author\/esmefm\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"The devices are available. The prices are negotiated. So why aren\u2019t patients benefiting? Across low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), significant progress has been made in expanding access to noncommunicable disease (NCDs) diagnostics. Devices have been sourced. Prices have been negotiated. Quality assurance frameworks exist. And yet the patients who need these tools are not benefiting…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2634"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2643,"href":"https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2634\/revisions\/2643"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncdconnect.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Without an institutional mandate, procurement teams have limited basis to order. Without dedicated financing or reimbursement mechanisms, even well-motivated facilities face structural barriers.<\/span><\/p>\n
This challenge is compounded by limited data. Many LMICs lack the health information infrastructure to track diagnostic availability and use, even in tertiary hospitals.<\/a> And without that visibility, it is hard to justify budget allocation or policy integration.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nDiagnostic literacy, training, and maintenance<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n
The result is predictable: devices sit unused, degrade faster than expected, or produce results that are not acted upon. Not because the technology is wrong, but because the clinical and operational infrastructure to support it was never put in place.
Access to a device is not the same as access to a diagnosis.\u00a0<\/p>\nWhat it takes to move from availability to use<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n
Where diagnostics are part of care delivery, not as standalone products. They are specified in treatment protocols, tracked alongside clinical outcomes, and included in budgets from the outset. This ensures they are not deprioritised when resources are constrained.
Workforce capacity is addressed in parallel. Training and technical support are embedded into routine operations, rather than delivered as isolated interventions.
Procurement models also extend beyond central purchasing. Demand is pooled across district hospitals, community health posts, and faith-based facilities, creating more stable volumes and ensuring continuity of supply at the point of care.
These are not expensive conditions to create. They are organisational and political choices, requiring coordination across ministries, procurement bodies, and implementing partners, that no single actor can deliver alone.<\/p>\nFrom access to impact<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n
The platform brings together 40 quality-assured NCD diagnostics and medical devices across diabetes, cardiovascular disease, oncology, and respiratory care. These are supplied under long-term, pre-negotiated agreements designed for procurement realities – low minimum order quantities, reliable supply, and pricing benchmarked against independent market analyses.
Within this model, partnerships play a structuring role. A subset of 14 priority diabetes diagnostics is integrated through our partnership with FIND<\/a>, supporting more consistent and standardised care. At the same time, NCDconnect builds on the infrastructure of its parent organisation, IDA Foundation<\/a>, bringing established procurement and quality assurance systems that reach from central medical stores to faith-based health facilities.
This combination of pricing discipline and system design translates into measurable efficiency gains. We compared NCDconnect\u2019s negotiated terms against a 2023 meta-analysis from the University of Geneva, which compiled real market prices for diagnostics across 51 LMICs. The result: our not-for-profit model delivers median savings of 9% on blood glucose monitors and 79% for test strips.<\/a> Resources that can be redirected towards patient care.
In practice, this means working alongside ministries of health, coalitions, NGOs, and local procurement teams to ensure diagnostics are not only available, but embedded into functioning systems of care.
If that is a challenge you are working on, we would be glad to think it through together.\u00a0<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"