Managing a robust and resilient supply of medicines

All NHS patients have a right to access treatment - whether prescribed or available over the counter - to meet their needs. Where those medicines are in shortage, we recognise the implications this can have on the health and wellbeing of patients, as well as the significant challenges it presents to dedicated healthcare professionals.

In the UK there are over 14,000 licensed medicines. These rely on complex, global supply chains that are highly regulated in their manufacture and distribution to ensure patient safety. While at any one time the vast majority of medicines are in good supply, we accept that we cannot prevent all shortages from occurring. Medicine shortages can arise from a wide range of multifaceted causes not specific to the UK and with far-reaching impact across the world. Our role, working closely with all our partners across the medicines supply chain, is to help reduce the frequency of shortages and minimise patient impact when they occur.

The UK is not alone in facing challenges with medicines shortages, with many other nations experiencing disruption. In the UK, there is no single, reliable measure that can comprehensively reflect an increase or decrease in the frequency of reported supply issues over the past 3 years. However, we have seen supply issues increase in complexity in recent years. The most common cause, as reported by suppliers, is manufacturing disruption, often linked to raw material availability. Other causes reported include demand surges, and transport and logistical issues (see section 2: ‘Trends of UK medicines supply issues’).

To that end, increasing resilience of UK medicines supply chains remains a priority for the government. This spans activity within the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and NHS England but also areas of trade, international co-operation and industrial strategy. Robust supply chains are an important underpinning of the government’s growth and health missions.

A wide range of people and organisations are impacted by the stability and reliability of the supply of medicines. Therefore, this document is aimed at a broad audience, including all those operating across the supply chain and in the provision of care to patients and patient groups.

This document has 3 main objectives:

Transparency

To provide greater transparency of the supply chains we rely on and the action we take to protect patients from medicines shortages when they occur.

To support the availability of medicines that patients rely on, we monitor and manage medicines supply at a national level and have a range of well-established systems and processes to proactively prevent disruptions where possible and effectively mitigate their impact on patients when they do occur.

Resilience

To outline the steps we plan to take to further enhance processes for mitigating medicine shortages and to strengthen long-term resilience. These include:

• tangible measures around earlier identification of potential disruption
• enhanced reliability and timeliness of supply across the whole supply chain
• improving communication and guidance to different sectors
• strong international partnerships

Partnership

To invite all partners across the health system and medicines supply chain to continue to work with us and the NHS to co-design and provide the changes needed to ensure a consistent and reliable supply of medicines to patients.

The approaches we have set out are not intended to provide a complete and definitive solution to the complex issues facing medicines supply around the world. However, they are steps we can take forward together, to better predict and withstand medicine shortages and protect patients from disruption.

Read the full policy paper below.

Source: UK Government: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/managing-a-robust-and-resilient-supply-of-medicines/managing-a-robust-and-resilient-supply-of-medicines 

The Critical Supply Group consists of companies and professionals committed to secure and resilient critical supply chains. CSG is managed by MAP UK & International. For more details, including how to get involved, or to make contact with any of the entities involved, please email info@mapukinternational.com.