Despite the fact that efforts have been made to improve coordination in the global fight against disease, global pharmaceutical chains still remain fragmented and lack coordination. A newly published paper by professors at NYU Wagner and MIT-Zaragoza highlight ten fundamental challenges that pharmaceutical companies face with respect to supply chains.
The research titled "The Top Ten Global Health Supply Chain Issues: Perspectives from the field" has been published in Operations Research for Healthcare and was written by Natalie Privett, assistant professor of management and policy at the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University, and David Gonsalvez, professor of supply chain management at the MIT-Zaragova International Logistics Program, and former global supply chain director with General Motors.
The research article highlights the key areas of weakness and outlines the measures that are needed to strengthen pharmaceutical supply chains and help make the fight against global diseases more effective.
For the purpose of the article, Privett and Gonsalvez interviewed 22 individuals with different roles in supply chains. They asked them to identify the top ten challenges. The areas that were most cited by the respondents included lack of coordination; inventory management; absent demand information; human resource dependency; order management; shortage avoidance; expiration; warehouse management; temperature control; and shipment visibility.
The article states that lack of coordination in the pharmaceutical supply chain is a root cause issue since it aggravates every other issue either directly or indirectly. The authors also highlight the opportunities for pharmaceutical companies that should drive future actions, policies and research and point out that measures should be taken to improve pharmaceutical delivery in regions that need it. This will make the global health challenge easier to take on and will help save lives.
Source: Operations Research for Healthcare
Image Credit: Gafin.vn
