Knowledge Sharing

Designing Global Health Supply Chains for the Future

The objective of this project was to build alignment among donor agencies, governments, and private companies as to the supply chain investments that must be made now to prepare for future changes in healthcare demand. The convergence of trends in technology, innovation, economic growth, and shifting disease burdens will likely drive large-scale changes in the type and quantity of medicines that patients seek, as well as the location and delivery mechanism they prefer. However, the types of investments needed to address these changes – building additional supply chain capacity or developing new workforce competencies – require years to plan and execute, and they cannot be successful without a clear and well-informed vision of future supply chain needs.

WDI helped provide this clear vision through a number of different research avenues:

  1. Synthesizing reports on future trends across several industries, breaking down the meaning and applicability of those trends for the governments, donor agencies, private companies and patients who comprise the global health supply chain
  2. Developing quantitative models to estimate future changes in health supply chain demand levels, based on existing epidemiological, socioeconomic, and medical trends research
  3. Simulating the impact of future demand changes on supply chain capacity needs and choice of optimal strategy

Through these various approaches, WDI successfully started a global conversation about the need for more future-oriented supply chain investments.

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