It is a well-known fact that Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) prioritizes the profit motive in R&D, and does not encourage R&D for less commercially promising diseases. The TRIPS approach is skewed away from diseases affecting the poorer population of the world, thus failing to address significant public health concerns. Immediate attention is required treatment of endemic diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis, AIDS, and other tropical diseases, which are not affordable for people in the lower income groups. This is now a major concern among people and organizations all over the world. The Medical Research and Development Treaty (MRDT) is one such important initiative, which has gained momentum over the last two years and tackles issues overlooked by TRIPS. It proposes to receive contribution from all member nations based on the country's financial robustness and seeks to invest in R&D, depending on the diseases that require priority research. This article discusses how MRDT offers a new paradigm for providing incentives to invest in R&D, equitable sharing of costs and knowledge, thus addressing vital health concerns.

The pharmaceutical industry invests a lot in terms of time and money towards R&D, which is fundamental for the discovery of molecules which can be used as drugs to treat new diseases. Obviously, they would prefer to invest in drugs through which they can recover the cost incurred. The process of patenting ensures the recovery of investments by giving the innovator firm a time-bound monopoly, thus providing incentive for innovation. From the industrial point of view, innovation is a commercially promising product, but from the public health point of view, innovation necessarily means therapeutic advance. This difference in the interpretation of the term "innovation" causes ambiguity and raises questions like—Does innovation in the real sense mean inventing drugs for diseases, or is it just about making trivial changes in existing drugs? The commercial outlook of the companies leads to neglect of research in diseases which affect a large section of the population who have low purchasing power; as it is difficult to recover their high innovation costs.