Global Health Governance: We Need Innovation not Renovation

Although the global health community widely accepts that WHO, as currently configured, is no longer fit-for-purpose, commentators cling to renovation (‘reform’), rather than innovation, at the expense of a global health governance system that reflects the needs of a very changed world.Collective action in a globalised world requires institutions that look very different from what we currently have. Rather than the renovation of outdated institutional forms—which are closed, territorially fixed and hierarchical—we need to harness innovations such as social networks, open-source systems and the sharing economy.One of the biggest forms of institutional innovation more broadly is ‘network governance’, by which collective action is achieved through interconnected institutions spanning government, business and civil society.