Scientific development is not neutral. One underlying source of the biased development is innovators' lack of information about the market demand for the new technology. We argue that IOs can provide information about the priority of technology to convince innovators of a credible market demand for ignored technologies, which facilitates R&D investment. We focus on the influence of the World Health Organization (WHO) on medical research on infectious diseases. Using disease characteristics to explore the informativeness of the market demand, we find that diseases with unequal geographic distribution receive a higher priority from the WHO while severe diseases are not listed as a high priority, confirming that the WHO's information provision substitutes for the lack of information about the market demand. Using a difference-in-differences specification to examine the effect of WHO priority on R&D investment, we find that WHO priority may have increased R&D investment in ignored diseases but discouraged clinical trials for these diseases.