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With the rapid spread of COVID-19 epidemic, pharmaceutical and medical technology companies continue their works with the aim of serving patients and promoting health, and focus on supporting healthcare personnel in treatment and prevention. The laboratory testing companies are working on a 7/24 basis to develop new molecular tests to diagnose COVID-19 quickly and accurately.
Pharmaceutical and medical technology companies are facing new questions beyond just addressing the virus itself as it firmly establishes in more places and has a rapidly increasing impact on patients, society, and economies.
- How to maintain a global supply of critical diagnostic kits, drugs, medical supplies, and equipment to treat patients in the face of supply chain disruption?
- As COVID-19 spreads globally and impacts suppliers, how to avoid disruptions in R&D, including ongoing and planned clinical trials?
- How can they help patients and customers during this time?
COVID-19 puts the global supply chains under pressure for both pharmaceutical and medical technology products. Since China and India are home to major suppliers of components of the generic pharmaceutical sector, the virus's disruption of production is also causing serious disruptions in the supply chain.
In addition, Asia has the largest suppliers in the field of medical technology. For example, fabrics, which are the raw materials of N95 masks, and isolation gowns, are produced in Asia, and imports to the entire world have been interrupted due to the fact that the virus was first impacted Asia.
While many pharmaceutical and medical technology supply chains are able to meet the demand from current inventory to date to a large extend, it is very important for companies to activate analytics and scenario modeling, considering the potential more aggressive infection scenarios in the next few months, in order to fully understand their supply chains and define their best products that face potential supply issues with perspective.
- Identifying the products or logistics disruptions affected by possible shutdowns of suppliers, and the base suppliers of such suppliers in Asia (especially in China).
- Understanding stock levels across the entire supply chain and adapting to new realities.
- Stress testing supply chains for the COVID-19 case based on various scenarios (like potential “second wave” infections in late 2020).
- Speeding up production on alternative sources of supply that are already available (for example, secondary suppliers or intermediate suppliers).
- Implementing an allocation process for affected products and actively managing the distribution of restricted products.
- Starting to look for additional or alternative suppliers for raw materials and components (longer timelines required for technology transfers and regulatory approvals must be known).
In the medium term, once the COVID-19 issue improves and is clarified, companies should take additional steps to strengthen their supply chains and operations to withstand the impact of future public health crises.
Against such potential adverse developments in the future, multiple steps should become necessary to recognize the supply chain risks identified in this global crisis including strengthening data, analytics, and capabilities as aids to strategy and resilience, further diversification of international supply chains (and create more backup and resilience), developing a new production network, implementing the ongoing contingency planning as the new normal, and keeping strategic stocks.
In addition to supplying products to help diagnose, treat and prevent COVID-19, the pharmaceutical and medical technology companies may be in a position to help their customers in new ways. The companies can also help develop solutions to support patients in affected areas, such as home medication, off-site access, or telemedicine services. They can emphasize the use of digital channels to make sure that customers and patients are getting what they need. These channels may offer self-service options for patient service and customer service inquiries, online ordering, and alternatives to call centers; and in some cases, video options can replace face-to-face interaction.
Covid-19 is not a one-off challenge. In the future, it may be possible to expect new waves in the current epidemic and new epidemics. We need to develop predictive approaches to the effectiveness of organizational responses to dynamic crises.
Preparing for the next crisis (or the next phase of the current crisis) is likely to be much more effective than a temporary, reactive response when the crisis actually hits.
In this difficult time, the industry has the opportunity to pool all its resources and capabilities to address all the challenges COVID-19 presents to human health.