ARC created a series of dashboards that allow the ministry of health to easily monitor inventory levels of healthcare products down to the facility level.
Date:
July 1, 2021
Author(s):
Africa Resource Centre
BACKGROUND
The Kenya Medical Supplies Agency (KEMSA) is the centralised authority at the Kenyan Ministry of Health (MoH) that oversees the procurement, warehousing and distribution of all acute, chronic and strategic medicines.
Medicines in Kenya are primarily procured at a national level by KEMSA and then distributed by individual counties across the last mile. This has, in some cases, led to KEMSA having limited stock visibility; which negatively impacts its ability to forecast demand. Decreased visibility contributes to delays in distributing products and replenishment, or inadvertently, the oversupply of products to facilities that already have high inventory levels.
ARC’S ROLE
The Africa Resource Centre (ARC) identified an opportunity to support the MoH and KEMSA to advance their objectives to increase visibility throughout their supply chain to improve the availability of medicines at their point of need.
The MoH approached ARC to develop a dashboard that would allow it to have end-to-end visibility of healthcare products down to the facility level. ARC helped create a series of sample dashboards that enable the MoH to easily monitor inventory levels across the value chain.
These dashboards provide insights into product availability at the central, sub-national, county, and facility levels. This will help with planning and forecasting; managing inventory and redistributing slow-moving products where necessary; and identifying problem areas that need more intensive interventions. Additionally, these dashboards offer real-time insights that can inform the long-term effectiveness and sustainability of the supply chain. The sample dashboards are now ready for integration with KEMSA.
OUTCOMES AND IMPACT
ARC’s support to ministries of health focuses on strengthening six supply chain elements. The work to increase visibility across Kenya’s public health supply chain strengthened three of these six areas: strategy, improvement roadmap, and solutions proposals.
ADVANCING THE MANAGEMENT OF MEDICINE STOCK VOLUMES AND SUPPLY
Key element: improvement roadmap
ARC supported the MoH’s aim to continually improve access to medicines by offering insights into stock levels and demand for key healthcare supplies. This will also support planning and forecasting work.
IMPACT: Improved visibility of medicines at all levels of the supply chain will help improve their availability when and where they are needed.
EXPANDING VISIBILITY OF END-TO-END MEDICINE SUPPLY
Key element: strategy
ARC developed a comprehensive dashboard tool to give the MoH visibility of its medicine demands, stock levels and delivery from a national level right down to the last mile.
IMPACT: The initial phase of work on the visibility dashboard was well received by the MoH and has been extended to include all universal health coverage products.
IDENTIFYING TOOLS AND EXPERTISE TO SUPPORT IMPROVED VISIBILITY
Key element: solutions proposals
ARC expanded the MoH’s capability by connecting it with tools and expertise to increase medicines’ visibility to the last mile.
IMPACT: Increased understanding of medicine demand and the effectiveness of supply for different medicines in different regions across the country.
