OECD countries are faced with the health-care challenges of ageing populations and others, such as increasingly drug-resistant diseases and the risk of global pandemics. Innovation is a critical means of improving the capacity of health systems to address these problems while containing escalating costs. The public sector plays a significant role alongside business and non-profit organisations, by supporting R&D directly but also through the procurement of new treatments resulting from R&D. Government budget appropriations or outlays for R&D (GBAORD) indicate that direct government support of health-related R&D in OECD countries was about 0.1% of their combined GDP in 2008. The United States is by far the largest funder in both absolute and relative terms, at just over 0.3% of GDP spent on health R&D.