October 4th, 2024
This comprehensive study delves into the profound impacts of global shifts and underlying forces on existing procurement and supply chain management (PSM) programs, offering crucial insights for donors, country governments, and the private sector. The paper examines the intersection of four pivotal global health forces—Population and Disease Transition, the Environment, Technology, and the Economy—and presents four key action areas to address these challenges: Patient-Centric Supply Chain Redesign and Financing; Technology Readiness Level (TRL) Scale for Investments; Combined Risk Scenario Planning for Resilience; and Increased Transparency, Governance, and Coordination. We believe that this paper provides a vital roadmap for guiding our collective efforts toward a healthier, more resilient world.
January 9th, 2024
The original version of the eLMIS Target Software Standards was developed in 2018. This version was developed and released to update these standards and to expand on them in order to recognize the role eLMIS plays in a larger digital ecosystem interconnected with supply chain and health delivery services. This version builds on the original by adding more levels of specificity, establishing a ‘living document’ approach so that it can remain relevant over time and expands on the definition of capabilities that are needed for a country to support a healthy digital supply chain.
June 9th, 2021
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, or drones, have garnered an increasing amount of interest and investment within the international development and humanitarian spaces. Common applications in these contexts include mapping and imaging, monitoring, post-disaster relief, search and rescue, and health delivery. From floods and earthquakes to refugee camps, the imaging applications are numerous and widely deployed. Health delivery, in contrast, remains an underdeveloped area of work, as the technology for cargo drones is still rapidly evolving, often prohibitively expensive, and poses security and regulatory challenges that drones for imaging do not. Donor agencies have unique and at times competing objectives that tend to limit collaboration and options to pool funding in support of any singular activity. Moreover, the number of development and humanitarian organizations with on-the-ground drone experience is limited to less than a handful of implementers. However, this is changing.
October 29th, 2020
Through the USAID Office of HIV/AIDS, GHSC-PSM received funds to explore the use of drones for HIV/AIDS commodity deliveries to isolated and difficult-to-reach communities and to better understand the potential to improve health outcomes in low resource settings. The resulting activity was designed to focus on rural settings which experience limitations in the existing distribution system and lab sample network. These limitations, coupled with geographic and infrastructure challenges, leave gaps in service provided to patients. The activity included research into existing drone delivery activities, current drone technology, government regulations, feasibility assessments of numerous countries and scoping visits, public procurement for drone services, and collaborative activity design sessions in the selected country. The activity report highlights key lessons learned and recommendations for future drone delivery implementation.
October 19th, 2020
The ISG aim to create greater visibility, alignment and coordination of global and country LMIS assets. Help us get there by updating the spreadsheet or contact the ISG directly.
September 25th, 2020
This document was developed by UNICEF with contributions from members of the Interagency Supply Chain Group (ISG). Its development was motivated during the Health Systems Strengthening Workshop hosted by UNICEF in 2018 when national government representatives collectively and unanimously expressed concerns about increasing demands for engagement in assessments of national supply chains for medicines and health products. They expressed a critical need for guidance on selecting the most appropriate tools in order to improve the focus and usefulness of the resulting information.
September 24th, 2020
Recognizing that the Sustainable Development Goals will depend on a clear vision and collaborative implementation around medicines supply chains, a review to further examine factors that could further the quality and impact of agency collaboration in supply chains for essential medicines, was undertaken by the Interagency Supply Group in 2016.
September 23rd, 2020
The MD3 is a user-generated database to consolidate evidence from drone delivery projects and implementations and to contribute to the industry’s experience sharing and learning. The MD3 has been developed by the UPDWG with the support from ISG UAS.
July 24th, 2020
This document outlines the set of agreed guiding principles for the quality assurance of essential medicines and other health care commodities, which donors will require of countries, bilateral, multilateral and third- party procurers when they use donor funds to purchase essential medicines. These agreed guiding principles would help ensure consistency in requirements for quality standards of essential medicines procured with donor funding and will provide uniformity in the application of these standards. These principles have important considerations, including that manufacturers who invest in assuring that their products meet international quality standards are not disadvantaged but are instead incentivized to remain in these markets.
November 1st, 2019
The toolkit provides donors, governments, technology partners, and implementing partners tools and resources to improve the quantity, quality, and availability of evidence around the use of UAS/UAVs/Drones. The toolkit contains an implementation roadmap, logical framework, priority indicators, data collection plans, and sample data collection tools. This toolkit was developed by Village Reach with support from the ISG UAS Coordinating Body.
October 1st, 2019
While UAS can cover a wide range of uses, this document focuses on their use in health supply chain delivery. The document highlights existing regulations and systems, as well as use cases for supply chain operations. It also offers elementary and essential information to consider when examining the potential use of UAS in country programmes, together with a list of useful resources. The guidance has been developed by UNICEF Supply Division.
September 24th, 2019
Estimates for global markets for medicines and vaccines predict a 30% increase by 2030 (IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics, 2017). Population growth, new products in the pipeline, and changes in public health--such as the growing burden of non-communicable diseases that require lifetimes of treatment--all contribute to the increased demand. Systems for procurement and supply chain management (PSM) must adapt accordingly to reach the ambitions of the Sustainable Development Goals towards Universal Health Coverage to prevent, treat and manage diseases. The invaluable role of supply chains within health systems is indeed underscored by the past three decades of investments by ministries of health, the international development community and other actors. Despite the investments, progress remains fragile in many low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) and the complexity of this problem as a public health issue may not be sufficiently recognized.
December 1st, 2018
As a result of a consultative multi-stakeholder process this assessment provides a foundation for both 1) prioritizing a short-list of use cases for UAVs in global health and supply chain delivery and 2) beginning to detail the requirements to operationalize these use cases.
November 24th, 2018
A "visibility and analytics network" (VAN) is a virtual platform of people, processes, and technology to capture and use supply chain data to provide enhanced visibility for short and long-term coordinated decision making, and foster effective collaboration. Commonly known as 'control towers' in the private sector, VANs comprise an information hub that affords visibility on inventory and shipments, linking data from other applications into one console to provide a picture of what's taking place in the supply chain. Implementing a VAN approach can help catapult the health supply chain to higher levels of performance and close to an integrated state. By providing a coordinated view of such information, a VAN aims to achieve goals such as improved Government planning for better for inbound deliveries and enabling donors, procurers and manufacturers to carry out more coordinated ordering and delivery planning.
January 24th, 2018
The improvement national supply chain systems in developing countries has gained unprecedented support in the last decade. With increasing recognition of the critical position that supply chains occupy within global health, stakeholders have worked to prioritize investments, increase funding and improve outputs on an unmatched scale.
January 2nd, 2018
This White Paper gives an overview of the role of geography, product, and UAS type in prioritizing deliveries by UAS. The document serves as an analytical tool for policy- and decision-makers in deciding the optimal use of drones in supply chain operations. The White Paper has been developed by JSI, InSupply Health and Llamasoft.
December 1st, 2017
This report identifies opportunities and challenges for UAVs to develop and scale in the global health context, and it lays out a proposed investment roadmap for donors to coordinate their investments strategically to shape and accelerate this market. This study has laid the foundation for the creation of the ISG UAS.
August 24th, 2017
The broad purpose of the Interagency Supply Chain Group (ISG) is to share information and seek greater alignment across supply-chain investments to bring more impact to individual agency supply chain strategies. The group promotes coordination both globally across programs, and locally through national leadership -with the overall aim of improving the efficiency and effectiveness of in-country supply chains. The ISG is an informal partnership of 15 major actors involved in providing supply chain support to countries: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, DFID, Global Affairs Canada, the Global Drug Facility, KfW, the Global Fund, Gavi, NORAD, UNDP, UNFPA, UNICEF, USAID, World Bank, WFP and WHO.
August 1st, 2017
The broad purpose of the Interagency Supply Chain Group (ISG) is to share information and seek greater alignment across supply-chain investments to bring more impact to individual agency supply chain strategies. The group promotes coordination both globally across programs, and locally through national leadership with the overall aim of improving the efficiency and effectiveness of in-country supply chains. The ISG is an informal partnership of 15 major actors involved in providing supply chain support to countries: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, DFID, Global Affairs Canada, the Global Drug Facility, KfW, the Global Fund, Gavi, NORAD, UNDP, UNFPA, UNICEF, USAID, World Bank, WFP and WHO.
March 9th, 2015
The aim of the Key Performance Indicators (KPI) harmonization exercise was to agree on a common reduced number of core strategic supply chain indicators that will be adopted and integrated by agencies in their planning and reporting cycles.