IIT Madras, Krea University study can help boost medicine delivery

Conducted in Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Odisha and Punjab, the study identifies key operational, logistic and infrastructural challenges in drug delivery system and suggests measures to address medicine shortage.

The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras and Krea University, Chennai, conducted a study that can help states boost medical deliveries. The study showed that fill rates of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Odisha, and Punjab could potentially rise to 53 per cent as compared to an average fill rate of 30.95 per cent.  

The four states were chosen for the study as they were the largest Indian states with the largest populations in the country.  The study found that despite the operational, logistic and infrastructural challenges that exist in the current drug supply system, several measures can be undertaken by state governments to considerably ease the system and address medicine shortage. 

The study focused on issues that are identified in the procurement process of essential medicines and was conducted by RP Sundarraj, Department of Management Studies, IIT Madras, and Vijaya C Subramanian, Department of Operations Management, IFMR-GSB, Krea University. The research was published in the peer-reviewed journal, ‘Social Science and Medicine’.  

The study confirms the intuition that order timing is very important to meeting demands and that states must consider staggering their orders instead of batching them. While the current processes of applying penalties and blacklisting suppliers are important levers with a state, a graded manner of applying these can help alleviate issues.  

RP Sundarraj, Department of Management Studies, IIT Madras, said, “Essential medicine is a key issue affecting health outcomes. This is especially an issue in low and middle income countries. The Indian government recognises this and has enabled the import and production of Application Programming Interface for the manufacture of such medicines.” 

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