When Philanthropy Bankrolls the World’s Health Dashboard
A half-billion-dollar check rarely tells you much about how power actually moves through an industry. But when the Gates Foundation committed $540.2 million over ten years to the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation — the largest single gift in the university’s history — it wasn’t funding a new drug, a device, or even a hospital wing. It was funding a spreadsheet. A very large, very consequential spreadsheet that governments, insurers, and researchers around the world already use to decide where to spend scarce health dollars.