News & numbers Assistive technology shortage
The enabling of an individual to perform natural human functions through technological assistance is undeniably a social good. However, in 2021, the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP) released a report to showcase the lack of assistive devices, and to make the case for an interventionist public policy to address it. There are hundreds of assistive device types, but IIPP focused on two areas with the largest unmet need: wheelchairs and hearing aids.
Assistive products are any external product used to maintain or improve an individual’s
functioning and independence, and thereby promote their well-being.
Wheelchairs – Leading global
suppliers have limited interest in low- and middle-income (LMIC) markets due
to low and erratic funding and demand, a reliance on a distributor network that is often poorly developed in LMICs and a need to develop products with specifi c design features. Various NGOs and faith-based organisations fi ll that gap and deliver low-cost, manual wheelchairs that are specifi cally designed for LMIC environments.
200 The number of wheelchair manufacturers
operating in the US, of which only fi ve have sales in excess of $100m.
>50
These companies account for less than half of the total market, showing just how fragmented it is.
Four in fi ve
The number of people who live in a LMIC country and need a wheelchair.
Source: UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, ‘New economics of assistive technology: A call for a missions approach’ Medical Device Developments /
www.nsmedicaldevices.com 13
In order to address the barriers to health access and delivery in the case of assistive products, IIPP recommends market-shaping policies that bring together key stakeholders from government, industry and NGOs. The organisation argues that the idea of market shaping has been applied to various global health problems throughout the past decades. As evidence, it points to the United States Agency for International Development’s efforts to reduce the cost of antiretroviral drugs for HIV by 99% in ten years, increase the number of people receiving malaria treatment and double the number of women receiving contraceptive implants in four years, while saving donors and governments $240m. The authors of the paper believe it is only through this interventionist, market-shaping approach, that the Global Cooperation on Assistive Technology, set up in 2019, will reach its goal of halving the defi cit of assistive technology provision by reaching 500 million people by 2030.
An estimated 90% of the one billion people who require a particular assistive product do
not have access to that device.
One estimate of the fi nancial burden of disability globally amounts to a loss of GDP of
between $1.37trn and $1.94trn.
Hearing aids – while a markedly different device with varying supply chain structures they face similar supply and demand-side challenges to wheelchairs, due to
reliance on charity-based models and limited multinational industries for production.
90%
The percentage of the hearing aid market controlled
by fi ve major companies.
466 million The number of people
globally that have disabling hearing loss, with this number expected to double by 2050.
The portion of people who need hearing aids and have them, meaning there is
3% 97% in need that suffer without them.
Illustration and Icons/
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