Frequently Asked Questions
What does the Center for Health Market Innovations (CHMI) do?
How does CHMI select programs for its database?
How does CHMI collect information about programs?
What are the criteria CHMI uses to select programs?
What types of programs are not within the scope of CHMI?
How reliable is the information on the CHMI website?
How does it benefit my program to be profiled on CHMI’s programs database?
What do I do if I see incorrect information about a program in the CHMI database?
What is the CHMI Pipeline?
How do I suggest a program for CHMI to profile?
How can I find more information about funders?
How comprehensive is the CHMI database?
How can I get more information on a program profiled in the CHMI database?
How did CHMI come about?
What does the Center for Health Market Innovations (CHMI) do?
The Center for Health Market Innovations (CHMI) identifies, analyzes and connects programs working to improve health and financial protection for the poor. CHMI does not itself implement, manage or fund any programs. CHMI seeks to forge relationships between actors in the health marketplace to enable the expansion and replication of promising programs. Learn more about CHMI’s Partners and Roadmap of planned activities.
How does CHMI select programs for its database?
CHMI’s Programs Database is managed by its partner organizations and the wider Health Market Innovations community. While CHMI’s partners help build and manage the programs database to ensure quality, new programs are often added to the database by others: program managers, funders, researchers, and other members of the larger CHMI community.
Anyone can join CHMI, and enter a program profile. Programs entered by members of CHMI are published immediately, and will then be reviewed by CHMI partner organizations for quality and relevance. Anyone can suggest a change to update a program profile. CHMI partners rapidly review change requests; program profiles are typically updated within 24 hours.
CHMI strives to be an independent source of innovative ideas for people looking to start, expand, replicate, analyze or fund health programs. CHMI partners work in 16 countries where they identify programs and policies, analyze promising new models, and connect program managers with potential funders and other partners. However, due to the large number of programs CHMI profiles, at any given time, there may be errors or inconsistencies in the database. Please let us know when you notice something that seems incorrect, and we will work to correct it.
CHMI has well-defined criteria for programs in its database, but innovation can depend on where you sit, since what may be new in one setting is well established in another. CHMI it is ultimately interested in representing programs that use economic levers to improve their health marketplaces, so criteria can be flexibly applied to interesting programs. From time to time, CHMI may un-publish programs it deems out of scope or lacking sufficient information to determine relevance.
How does CHMI collect information about programs?
CHMI identifies, analyzes and disseminates information on Health Market Innovations in order to better understand the prevalence and distribution of different types of programs and enable further analysis. To learn about our approach, review CHMI's Methodology.
What are the criteria CHMI uses to select programs?
CHMI profiles five distinct categories of Health Market Innovations, or Program Types, which can all play a role in making health markets work better: Organizing Delivery, Financing Care, Regulating Performance, Changing Behaviors and Enhancing Processes. See CHMI Definitions to learn more about Health Market Innovations.
What types of programs are not within the scope of CHMI?
CHMI is primarily focused on programs with the potential to improve the functioning of health markets. Health Market Innovations are quite diverse, but they do not include all innovative, effective, and compassionate health care programs currently in operation around the developing world.
The following types of programs are examples of those that are excluded from the CHMI program database (they are well documented and studied by other initiatives, do not target the poor and/or do not employ one or more of the five market-improving mechanisms defined by CHMI):
- For-profit organizations predominately utilized by the wealthy (e.g., high-end hospitals, health insurance targeting large companies), unless they have a clear program designed to serve the poor
- Simple corporate social responsibility programs (e.g., drug or other donations, provision of care to employees), unless they utilize an innovative approach to financing or delivering health care
- Programs designed to spur development of drugs and vaccines for neglected diseases (CHMI focuses primarily on delivery and financing, rather than upstream interventions, which are well-covered by other initiatives)
- Individual providers (at this point CHMI is not attempting to map all private sector providers of services, but rather the programs with potential to improve the performance of individual providers)
- Service delivery programs implemented by the public sector
- Free delivery of services by NGOs, FBOs and community organizations
How reliable is the CHMI website?
CHMI’s partners carefully collect information about the programs included in the database. When possible, we contact representatives of the programs profiled to ensure accuracy. We rate the quality of the information source on program profiles using the following guidelines:
- High: Interview with a program manager and/or a site visit
- Medium: High-quality program website or a trusted secondary source (e.g., published report, presentation)
- Low: Secondary online sources or other publicly available resources where the author or date cannot be verified
In addition, a CHMI partner organization logo in a program’s survey box indicates that a staff member from this partner organization independently verified the information through in person and phone interviews with program managers.
However, as programs are constantly changing and evolving, we realize that information can quickly become out of date. CHMI continues to build a large on-the-ground network for continuous data collection, along with soliciting contributions from web users. We welcome your help to keep CHMI accurate.
How does it benefit my program to be profiled in CHMI?
CHMI can help you:
- Improve your visibility and share successes with potential donors, investors and grant-makers
- Get connected with technology and other implementation partners in more than 100 countries
- Learn what works in other settings so you can continually improve on your program’s design
What do I do if I see incorrect information about a program in the CHMI database?
Please use the "Request a Change Form" if you find incorrect or out-of-date information posted about a program in the database. We will review the request and contact you if we have any questions. Please make sure to give us your name and contact information.
What is the CHMI Pipeline?
The CHMI Pipeline is where we store partially complete program profiles. Programs in the Pipeline contain varying amounts of information and we continue to collect key data points to complete pipeline profiles. Once we’ve collected enough information to provide a detailed picture of the program, the profile will be moved out of the Pipeline and published as completed. Help us grow CHMI by submitting information on programs in the Pipeline.
How do I suggest a program for CHMI to profile?
You may suggest a program for inclusion in the database by creating a program profile. For quality purposes, you will be asked to fill out a simple registration form in order to submit program information. Once registered, you will have access to the online data collection form[link]. Please note that programs entered into the database are first screened to determine if they fit within CHMI’s scope. If a program fits within our definition of Health Market Innovations (review CHMI Definitions to assess fit), submitted information will be reviewed for accuracy and then added to the database. We will contact you if we have additional questions.
How do I find more information about funders?
The funders database now contains dozens of funder profiles and CHMI is working to make this resource even more comprehensive, with more detailed information about each institution's funding priorities. The information posted on each funder’s profile is compiled from publicly available data. If you have further questions about a particular funder, we recommend that you look at the institution’s own website.
We welcome suggestions for new funders to be added to the database, as well as additional information on those already profiled (such as programs they fund, areas of interest, etc). You may send us this information by contacting us.
How comprehensive is the CHMI database?
To our knowledge the CHMI database is currently the most complete source of information about Health Market Innovations. We recognize that it is still very much a work in progress that will continue to grow over time through contributions by CHMI in-country partners and users of this website, as well as continuous literature reviews.
Although global in scope, there is a higher concentration of programs in countries landscaped by CHMI partner organizations. Thus, the distribution of programs in the CHMI database does not necessarily represent the distribution of programs globally.
How can I get more information on a program profiled in the CHMI database?
- Review any supporting documentation such as case studies attached to profiles
- Click on links in the Survey box at right
- Contact the people running the program directly by clicking on the “Contact this Program” link. You must be logged in to send a message
- Contact us at chmi@resultsfordevelopment.org if you need more information
How did CHMI come about?
The Center for Health Market Innovations developed out of a 2008-2009 initiative to understand the private sector’s participation in health care. “The Role of the Private Sector in Health Systems”, resulted in two synthesis reports by Results for Development and three technical papers by various partner institutions that included data on where people receive health services, a global survey of countries’ regulatory models, a scan of innovative non-state sector financing and delivery models, and a survey of attitudes toward the private health sector.
For strategic advice and guidance, the initiative convened a diverse global Working Group of experts that included government officials, representatives of policy and research institutions, and members of the for- and not-for-profit private health sector. This Rockefeller-commissioned work complemented years of previous work by numerous well-respected academics and institutions such as the World Bank and USAID. Based on the findings of this initial effort, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation decided to jointly fund follow-on activities to promote the improvement of health markets. CHMI is the result of this analysis, discussion, and seed funding.
For more information on the “Role of the Private Sector in Health Systems” initiative and to access all associated reports click here.