No one likes getting sick but the experience is infinitely scarier and more challenging when you can’t access the medicines you need to get better. This issue is very real for patients visiting health facilities in low-resource settings like Samoa, where stock is commonly managed using paper or outdated software systems and despite highly trained and capable local staff, stock-outs still occur. Across many places in the Pacific, the right medicines are not always available to people in the right quantities at the right time – not because of the staff working in these places but because they are using systems that are not fit for purpose. As a result, these facilities can struggle to meet the needs of their community, and people are left unnecessarily feeling sicker for longer. It also poses a very real risk to patients with long term conditions like diabetes, who require regular and consistent access to life saving drugs like insulin.
This is why Beyond Essential Systems, in collaboration with the mSupply Foundation, is very proud to announce that we have partnered with the Government of Samoa to help address health supply chain issues across the country. We will be working to improve access to essential medicines and medical supplies and are particularly enthusiastic about connecting with individuals across Samoan society, from health workers and decision makers to patients and community leaders. In doing so, we look forward to creating real, lasting impact across the entire health sector.
We will approach this project by combining our collaborative, country-focused approach, developed through years of experience in the Pacific, with cutting edge digital tools including mSupply and Tupaia. Our overall goal is to improve the end-to-end supply of medicines by implementing a reliable, efficient Pharmaceutical Logistics Management Information System and providing the necessary support to optimise its use.
By improving supply chain systems, we will support better health outcomes, from tertiary hospitals to smaller health facilities in the community. We will digitise supply chains across every health facility, to help workers improve their purchasing, storage and distribution processes and to streamline dispensing to help ensure patient safety.
At the Ministry of Health level, this will translate to real-time visibility of all commodities in the country, helping drive evidence-based decision making, reducing waste and improving the quality use of medicines.
As a key component in achieving this, we will be using mSupply, the leading medical supply chain management software for low resource settings around the world. Our experienced developers will adapt it to address Samoa’s specific needs, continuously collaborating with locals to ensure it works for them. It will also be integrated with Tupaia, a health data aggregation, analysis and visualisation platform designed specifically for the Pacific that will enable commodity data to be overlaid with information on service availability and readiness, infrastructure, utilisation and capability.
We look forward to being able to use our extensive experience, cutting edge technology, research skills, training tools and – most of all – growing our close relationship with local staff to support the people on the ground and help drive meaningful change.
