M&SOM Practice Platform

Pooled Purchasing for Vaccines, Medicines and Other Health Technologies: Issues and Opportunities for Research

Abstract

In markets with constrained supply (e.g., pandemic health products) low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are often priced out or put at the end of the supply queue. Similarly, in markets for health products with small demand in individual countries (e.g., TB medicines), individual country purchasing does not lead to uninterrupted, sustainable high-quality supply. Aggregating demand through pooled procurement is one mechanism which has been utilized for overcoming these two types of market shortcomings. There is evidence on the impact of joint/pooled procurement on reduction in unit prices, improving confidence in quality of products, reduction in purchasing related transaction costs, reduction in the risk of corruption in the procurement process, systematizing incentives for innovation, and expediting new product introduction. However, the incentives for participation in such pools vary between smaller and larger countries. Negotiating bilateral deals outside the pool may sometimes benefit a large country, but its hurts the overall system equilibrium. Stability of procurement pool’s membership also depends on the pool’s definition of success, along with the pool’s technical efficiency. This panel discussion will focus on what role can robust analytical research play in understanding and solving such challenges? It will also share resources for researchers to get additional contextual knowledge about the policy environment and provide pointers to relevant sources of data.

The first seminar took place on Wednesday May 4, 2022. The slides of the three presenters can be accessed through the following links: Aurelia Nguyen, Brenda Waning and Prashant Yadav. The PDF of the webinar chat log is available here. An online discussion forum has been set up through the INFORMS YouTube channel in order to facilitate further interactions with the seminar presenters and organizers for a period of one month following the seminar (i.e., until June 10, 2022).

---

If you have any trouble accessing any content on this page, please contact the managing editor, Machelle Zellers, at [email protected].

Back to M&SOM's Practice Platform home page.