From treatments priced beyond the reach of the poor to a refusal to tackle some of the world's most urgent health threats, critics of “big pharma” have seldom had it so easy.

Of the $157 billion spent by the private sector on health research and development (R&D) in 2016, just $505 million was for neglected diseases – conditions such as malaria and tuberculosis which affect billions of the poorest people worldwide.

But what if there was another way of developing the medicines we need? A way that eschews market incentives that stop pharma companies from developing medicines for diseases of poverty and does away with the secrecy that shrouds drug development.

According to advocates of open source pharma, there is.

“The goal of the pharmaceutical industry is to maximise financial return on investments through sales, high prices and anything that can deliver a lot of profit ,” says Els Torreele, executive director of the Access Campaign at Médecins Sans Frontières. “This is obviously not the case for diseases of poor people or neglected populations.”