Short of drugs? Call upon operations and supply chain management

Abstract

PurposeThis “impact pathways” paper argues that operations and supply chain management (OSCM) could help address the worsening drug shortage problem in high-income countries. This significant societal problem poses difficult challenges to stakeholders given the complex and dynamic nature of drug supply chains. OSCM scholars are well positioned to provide answers, introducing new research directions for OSCM in the process.Design/methodology/approachTo substantiate this, the authors carried out a review of stakeholder reports from six European countries and the academic literature.FindingsThere is little academic research and no fundamental agreement among stakeholders about causes of shortages. Stakeholders have suggested many government measures, but little evidence exists on their comparative cost-effectiveness.Originality/valueThe authors discuss three pathways of impactful research on drug shortages to which OSCM could contribute: (1) Developing an evidence-based system view of drug shortages; (2) Studying the comparative cost-effectiveness of key government interventions; (3) Bringing supply chain risk management into the government and economics perspectives and vice versa. Our study provides a baseline for future COVID-19-related research on this topic.

Fostering SME supplier‐enabled innovation in the supply chain: The role of innovation policy

“…More generally, public healthcare systems are increasingly reliant on innovation (e.g., new vaccines) to deliver affordable, high-quality care. They are also susceptible to government intervention in the form of policies and regulations that affect supply chain performance (de Vries et al, 2021;Dobrzykowski, 2019) and innovation outcomes more specifically. The NHS is a suitable context in which to study how institutional failures influence procurement and SME-enabled innovation processes because of its complicated institutional set-up in terms of (a) a nexus of rules, regulations, and norms affecting the NHS and its supply chain; and (b) a large number of organizations involved in the planning and delivery of public healthcare, whose interrelations are multiple and multifaceted.…”

Drug shortages: A systems view of the current state

“…The result is that the literature focuses primarily on first‐order causes and effects of drug shortages. Studies examining causal interrelations (higher‐order) are particularly scarce, both in the academic and gray literature (De Vries, Jahre, Selviaridis, Van Oorschot, Van Wassenhove, 2021).…”

Supply chain risk management strategies in normal and abnormal times: policymakers' role in reducing generic medicine shortages

“…generic) medicine shortages in recent years (Scholz, 2020;DiPiro et al, 2021). While policymakers in numerous countries had discussed strategies to address such shortages, few had implemented them by the time the pandemic struck (de Vries et al, 2021). This suggests that countries were at least aware of challenges an abnormal situation such as a pandemic could pose and were able to use this knowledge to respond rapidly to address resultant medicine supply issues caused by COVID-19.…”

“…Furthermore, it is only very recently that the operations and supply chain management (OSCM) community has started to earnestly explore the drivers of and solutions to shortages in medicine supply chains (de Vries et al, 2021), particularly from a SCRM perspective (Hopp et al, 2022;Yaroson et al, 2021). Accordingly, we focus on the relevance of well-established SCRMS for policymakers.…”

“…Although they are most often in shortage (Bogaert et al, 2015;WHO, 2016;FDA, 2019), there is a paucity of risk management research within this context (c.f. Ergun et al, 2022;Hopp et al, 2022;de Vries et al, 2021;Senna et al, 2021). In the present study, we adopt a case study approach and focus on the paracetamol supply chain because it exemplifies a commonly used essential generic medicine (WHO, 2021).…”