This resource explores how to design or improve supply chains in public health. Using simulation software and routine data, the optimization process described in this document identifies flexible strategies and necessary data for increasing the performance and cost effectiveness of all supply chain functions.
Tags: Surveillance & assessment, Supply chain management
This logistics handbook provides a system overview and overall approach to supply chain management. It offers practical guidance on the design and implementation of managing the supply chain, with an emphasis on health commodities. In particular, the document includes detailed information about the design and implementation of logistics management information systems and inventory control systems.
Tags: Prescribing & use, Supply chain management
The Supply and Awareness Technical Reference Team of the UN Commission on Life-Saving Commodities developed this set of briefs on promising practices in supply chain management. The seven modules guide countries in identifying and addressing key bottlenecks in the supply and distribution of the Commission’s 13 life-saving commodities across the reproductive, maternal, neonatal, and child health continuum of care. The briefs provide both proven and promising practices that may be used to address specific supply chain barriers faced by each country.
Tags: Surveillance & assessment, Prescribing & use, Supply chain management
This publication examines the potential opportunity for engaging third party service providers to support logistics functions of public health supply chain management—with an emphasis on distribution, warehousing, and inventory management. It provides information on when to consider outsourcing, the process of deciding whether outsourcing is a viable option in a particular context, and how to begin the outsourcing process. These points are illustrated by country examples of engaging the private sector in providing the logistics functions to support their public sector supply chains.
Tags: Supply chain management
This website includes a repository of information on USAID's SPS and SIAPS programs, which were designed to support and scale successful national pharmaceutical management programs. The SPS and SIAPS programs have been comprehensive, and the resources available here include Case Studies of sustained LMIC pharmaceutical improvements as well as a suite of electronic tools that help pharmaceutical managers develop sound policies and monitor supplies and services.
Tags: Regulatory systems, Surveillance & assessment, Prescribing & use, Supply chain management
This list, released in July 2019, is an updated version of the WHO’s essential medicines list. The 'Core List', which identifies minimum medicine needs for a basic health-care system, outlines the most efficacious, safe, and cost-effective medicines for priority conditions.
Tags: Prescribing & use, Selection & affordability, Technical document
This list, released in July 2019, is an updated version of the WHO’s essential medicines list for children. The 'Core List', which identifies minimum medicine needs for a basic health-care system, outlines the most efficacious, safe, and cost-effective medicines for priority pediatric conditions.
Tags: Prescribing & use, Selection & affordability, Technical document
This resource is an updated version of ‘Selection and Use’ in the suite of the essential medicines list resources. It delineates the changes made from past versions of the essential medicines lists.
Tags: Prescribing & use, Selection & affordability, Technical document
This resource includes highlights, general information, and technical and published information about WHO work related to Essential Medicines. Especially relevant are the region-specific pages about Essential Medicines, which include country profiles, regional areas of interest, and news specific to efforts in those regions.
Tags: Prescribing & use, Supply chain management, Selection & affordability, Research & development
The WHO’s compilation of lists – including medicines/finished pharmaceutical products, active pharmaceutical ingredients, and medicines quality control laboratories – that include medicines and ingredients that have been assessed by WHO and found to be acceptable for procurement.
Tags: Technical document, Prescribing & use
This list contains vector control products that have been assessed by WHO and found to be acceptable, in principle, for procurement by UN and other international agencies and countries.
Tags: Selection & affordability, Technical document
The Priority Assistive Products List was created to increase access to technologies that can help older people and people with disabilities lead better and more productive lives. The list responds to a growing need for quality-assured, useful and affordable assistive products as life expectancy increases and to fulfill global commitments to people living with disabilities. It ranges from products as simple as a pair of eyeglasses to more complex technologies such as wheelchairs.
Tags: Selection & affordability, Intellectual property, Technical document
This resource, which focuses on good pharmacy practice, is intended to assure the value of medicines is fully realized. Included in this approach is the important role of the pharmacist in assuming responsibility for patient uptake and adherence in medication use, including being readily available to patients with or without an appointment and managing/triaging health-related problems.
Tags: Surveillance & assessment, Prescribing & use
These guidelines outline the steps to consider for preparing and conducting a survey of medicines quality, a process that helps ensure that good quality medicines are available to patients. The resource provides recommendations and examples of various methodological approaches with a discussion of their advantages and disadvantages, and suggestions regarding how to prepare reports on the results obtained from such surveys.
Tags: Regulatory systems, Surveillance & assessment
Distribution is an important activity in the integrated supply-chain management of pharmaceutical products. Various people and entities are generally responsible for the handling, storage, and distribution of such products. The objective of these guidelines is to assist in ensuring the quality and identity of pharmaceutical products during all aspects of the distribution process. These aspects include, but are not limited to, procurement, purchasing, storage, distribution, transportation, repackaging, relabeling, documentation and record-keeping practices.
Tags: Regulatory systems, Prescribing & use, Supply chain management
This resource is an overview of actionable areas for solutions to shortages and stock outs of medicines, including tools to assess the medicines supply management systems. These tools will help countries identify strengths and weaknesses in their system with the goal of sustaining a reliable health supply system that: 1) integrates supply management into health system development; 2) develops an efficient mix of public-private partnerships; 3) maintains medicines quality in distribution channels; and 4) ultimately increases access to essential drugs.
Tags: Regulatory systems, Surveillance & assessment, Supply chain management, Selection & affordability
On this resource page, users will find information about comprehensive systems for quality assurance of medication and health product distribution. Topics included in the resources are: pharmacy services, starting materials, compounding, monitoring, finished products, procurement, storage.
Tags: Surveillance & assessment, Prescribing & use, Supply chain management
These documents contain lists of medical equipment typically required to provide health services in different types of health care facilities (such as health posts, health centers, district hospitals, provincial hospitals, and specialized hospitals). The medical equipment is listed in conjunction with the two most commonly-used classifying codes in international nomenclature, UMDNS and GMDN. These codes allow unambiguous identification and classification of equipment worldwide.
Tags: Selection & affordability, Technical document
This resource is a list of essential in vitro diagnostics and is designed to complement and enhance the impact of the WHO Model List of Essential Medicines. It is not intended to be prescriptive - country programs should make ultimate decisions about which Diagnostics are selected and where they are implemented based on national or regional burden of disease, unmet needs, and priorities. It is noted that the list "cannot have an impact without an integrated, connected, and tiered laboratory system, with adequate HR, training, laboratory infrastructure, and regulatory/quality assurance systems."
Tags: Selection & affordability, Technical document
This list of prequalified in vitro diagnostic products helps countries to easily make evidence-based selections when purchasing IVDs. By referencing the list when making purchasing decisions, countries can easily select IVDs that are safe, effective and cost-efficient.
Tags: Technical document, Selection & affordability
The GBT, with over 200 indicators, is the means by which WHO objectively evaluates regulatory systems, which play a key role in assuring the quality, safety, and efficacy of medical products. The tool incorporates the concept of ‘maturity level’, allowing assessment of the overall maturity of a regulatory system on a scale of 1 to 4, and is designed to be implemented in partnership with the WHO Regulatory Systems Strengthening team as part of a step-by-step approach to improvement.
Tags: Regulatory systems, Surveillance & assessment, Technical document
The Service Availability and Readiness Assessment is a widely used assessment tool across low- and middle-income countries. This resource’s sections on ‘general service’ and ‘service-specific’ readiness are tools for assessing the capacity of facilities to provide a specific service, measured through tracer items that include trained staff, guidelines, equipment/supplies, diagnostic capacity, medicines and commodities. The annex tables of this assessment include itemized tracer items for medicines and commodities within 14 specific services.
Tags: Surveillance & assessment, Technical document
The SPA surveys are part of a health facility assessment that provides a comprehensive overview of a country’s health service delivery. The SPA surveys collect information on the overall availability of different facility-based health services in a country and their readiness to provide those services. The SPA questionnaires were updated in 2012 in collaboration with international agencies to make them easier to use and to include additional information. The inventory questionnaire collects information for the calculation of USAID and WHO’s service readiness indicators.
Tags: Surveillance & assessment, Technical document
This resource touches upon the broad topic of technology as a tool for strengthening primary health care, which is integrally related to ensuring drugs, vaccines, and supplies are tracked, delivered, and used in sustainable ways. Digital technologies of all kinds have become essential resources in primary care and it is critical to integrate technology into approaches for strengthening health systems for every level of operation.
Tags: Regulatory systems, Surveillance & assessment, Research & development
This resource describes how the availability of high-quality medicines and products can contribute to the goal of high-quality care in Primary Health Care. National policies and guidelines for the manufacturing, procurement, supply-chain development, surveillance and safe use - as well as national regulatory bodies - may support the development of these required systems.
Tags: Regulatory systems, Surveillance & assessment, Prescribing & use, Supply chain management
Module 3.6 of the operational framework (page 34-37) outlines actions and interventions at various levels to improve physical infrastructure and appropriate medicines, products, and technologies. Supporting the ‘Digital technologies: shaping the future of primary health care’ document, the operational framework emphasizes appropriate diagnostic and therapeutic products technologies within the realm of drugs and supplies.
Tags: Research & development
In this report, WHO identifies priorities regarding improvement of availability and accessibility of drugs and supplies. Topics addressed in this report include rising medication prices, shortages and stock outs of essential medicines, the growing problem of substandard and falsified medical products, opioid abuse, and antimicrobial resistance.
Tags: Surveillance & assessment, Prescribing & use, Supply chain management, Selection & affordability, Intellectual property, Research & development
This report gives an overview of the WHO Department of EMP areas of focus in 2017, highlighting global priorities around antibiotic-resistant bacteria, cancer and hepatitis treatments, child-friendly vaccine availability partnerships, and substandard or falsified medical products. It also speaks on a broad level about WHO processes for supporting countries in strengthening regulatory systems, prequalification capacities, technical assistance on affordable pricing, preparedness for emergencies, and approaches to controlled substances.
Tags: Regulatory systems, Surveillance & assessment, Selection & affordability, Research & development
Risk management for public health supply chains focuses on organizing the logistics activities of the supply chain to ensure that commodities needed for health programs are continuously available, without disruption. Risk management is a continuous process of assessing and responding to risk within the supply chain. This toolkit can provide public health supply chain managers in developing countries with a simple process for identifying and analyzing the sources of risk within the supply chain and for developing a robust response to manage risk.
Tags: Supply chain management, Surveillance & assessment
This resource answers key R&D questions: What is R&D? Why do we need R&D? What are health technologies? What does the R&D process look like? Who are the players? What are the challenges? What is the role of Global Health Technologies Coalition?
Tags: Research & development
This link introduces the Fair Pricing Forum Report from the latest WHO convening in 2019. It also links to resources such as Medicines Pricing and Financing and Access to medicines: making market forces serve the poor.
Tags: Selection & affordability
This resource is an overview of the various ways the public sector can leverage the private sector to be involved in supply chain solutions. The four models identified for private sector engagement are: adapting and learning, contracting, collaboration, and stewardship.
Tags: Supply chain management
This resource is an overview of key trends in innovation of health product distribution in sub-Saharan Africa and their potential impact on availability, quality, cost, or geographic access of priority health products. The six categories identified in which the private sector can provide solutions include: consumer information, direct-to-consumer distribution, stock financing & ownership, inventory management, marketplace & fulfillment, and group purchasing.
Tags: Supply chain management
This report sets a baseline understanding of healthcare supply chains and characterizes the private sector role in supply chains in lower middle income countries. It is informed by in-depth case studies of Ghana and Zambia, as well as interviews of over 40 supply chain and health experts in 12 countries about private sector initiatives in those countries. The major findings characterize supply chains, analyze the potential to invest in private sector initiatives, and make recommendations for key stakeholders.
Tags: Supply chain management
This report focuses on procurement reform needs in the midst of rapid evolution in three areas: transition away from donor aid, epidemiological transition toward noncommunicable diseases, and health system organization shifts to universal health coverage.
Tags: Supply chain management
This tool offers stakeholders with questions to consider to maintain routine supply of public health commodities and support COVID-19 response. Stakeholders can review the series of questions in this tool by functional area that highlight factors to consider for effective response.
Tags: Supply chain management, COVID-19
The Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND) is a "global non-profit organization driving innovation in the development and delivery of diagnostics to combat major diseases affecting the world’s poorest populations." FIND turns complex diagnostic challenges into innovative solutions through partnership with the public, private, and non profit sectors, bridging research and development to access to essential diagnostics.
Tags: Digital technologies, Research & development, Private and multisectoral engagement
"The Supply Chain Manager’s Handbook is the starting point for anyone interested in learning about and understanding the key principles and concepts of supply chain management for health commodities. The concepts described in this handbook will help supply chain managers that are responsible for improving, revising, designing, operating, and monitoring all or part of a supply chain. The addendum provides an overview of health care supply chain management in the humanitarian response context, to help supply chain managers better prepare and deliver to the people who need relief during a crisis."
Tags: Supply chain management, Fragile and conflict affected settings
"The eEML is a comprehensive, freely accessible, online database containing information on essential medicines. The eEML combines detailed medicine information (e.g. pharmaceutical) data with comprehensive evaluation of benefits, harms and costs (e.g. effectiveness, safety, implications for health care systems) information. Most importantly the eEML provides the data related to the status of a medicine as an essential medicine. Because of its well-defined scope, identifying those medicines that everyone should have access to at all times, and that all governments should ensure are available – and affordable – to their populations, the eEML provides a blueprint on which countries can base their own national lists."
Tags: Selection & affordability, Technical document, Prescribing & use, Efficiency and cost-effectiveness
"The WHO COVID-19 Essential Supplies Forecasting Tool (ESFT) is designed to help governments, partners, and other stakeholders to estimate potential requirements for essential supplies to respond to the current pandemic of COVID-19. Although it gives users with an estimation of the number of cases, this calculator is not an epidemiological calculator. The focus of this tool is to forecast essential supplies: it includes estimation of personal protective equipment, diagnostic equipment, biomedical equipment for case management, essential drugs for supportive care, and consumable medical supplies."
Tags: Supply chain management, COVID-19
"inSupply Health, an affiliate of JSI Research & Training Institute, Inc. (JSI), is an independent, supply chain advisory firm based in East Africa that provides our clients with customized guidance on supply chain management and design."
Tags: Supply chain management
The Medicines, Technologies, and Pharmaceuticals (MTaPs) Program builds on the successes of the USAID-funded Systems for Improved Access to Pharmaceuticals and Services program to help LMICs strengthen their pharmaceutical systems. "MTaPS is implemented by a consortium, blending experience from prior USAID-funded PSS initiatives with updated and local expertise to effectively and sustainably help countries develop stronger pharmaceutical systems.The MTaPS Consortium, led by Management Sciences for Health, comprises core, global expert, and capacity resource partners. The program approach embeds training of capacity resource partners to strengthen local expertise in countries and ensure that improvements are sustainable."
Tags: Supply chain management, COVID-19
"The Partnership for Supply Chain Management helps donors, governments and public health programs to reach their goals of saving lives and serving people in some of the most challenging places on earth. We specialize in forecasting, procurement, multi freight forwarder logistics, pharma-compliant storage and end-to-end supply chain tracking solutions that ensure cost-savings, best quality products, on-time and in-full deliveries, product integrity and data visibility from manufacturer to patient...We leverage our unique quality assurance experience to undertake vendor quality audits in compliance with World Health Organization’s Model Quality Assurance System for Procurement Agencies, thereby expanding local in-country sources to strengthen supply chains and stimulate local economies."
Tags: Supply chain management, Efficiency and cost-effectiveness
"This study seeks to reinforce the understanding of the interplay between the distinct policy domains of health, trade and intellectual property, and of how they affect medical innovation and access to medical technologies. The second edition comprehensively reviews new developments in key areas since the initial launch of the study in 2013."
Tags: Research & development, Intellectual property