Pharmaceuticals in the Stress Test
11/02/2023Despite political efforts, the shortage of medicines remains acute. An interdisciplinary project at the University of Würzburg is looking into the issue. Supply chains of vital medicines are currently being analysed in comprehensive tests.
Medication shortages have been a threat for years. However, the issue has rarely received as much attention as it did last winter, when reports of a lack of antipyretics and antibiotic juices for children dominated the German media landscape. The reaction from politicians was not long in coming: In April, the Federal Cabinet approved a draft law aimed at preventing precisely this kind of situation in future.
Although the lack of fever syrups dominates airtime and headlines, shortages of many antibiotics, cancer drugs or so-called "last-line drugs" have far more serious consequences.
Experts doubt whether the law will really bring lasting improvement here. Professor Richard Pibernik, Head of the Chair of Logistics and Quantitative Methods in Business Administration at Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU), says: "The problem is even bigger today than it was a year ago, even though the critical season is still to come. There is no improvement in sight."
Würzburg Project Aims to Find Sustainable Solutions
Pibernik founded the EThICS initiative together with Professor Andrea Szczesny, Chair of Business Administration, Controlling and Internal Management Accounting, Ulrike Holzgrabe, Senior Professor of Pharmaceutical and Medicinal Chemistry, Dr Uwe Weidenauer, pharmacist and expert in pharmaceutical technology, and Dr Steffen Schweizer, Global Head of Procurement Lab Supply & Pharma Research at Bayer: Essential Therapeutics Initiative for Chemicals Sourcing for the European Union.
The aim is to move away from ad-hoc solutions and towards stable supply chains. This first requires an analysis of the status quo. The term "time-to-survive" has become established in the field of supply chain risk management. This describes the period of time until a supply failure or bottleneck leads to supply bottlenecks and problems for the population.
"We currently do not know the time-to-survive in Germany for our most important active ingredients. As a result, we lack an important building block for identifying and implementing resilience-enhancing measures to ensure the supply of essential medicines to the population," explains Richard Pibernik.
Focus on Essential Medicines
The interdisciplinary team has focussed on a number of active ingredients that are both highly therapeutically relevant and highly dependent on global suppliers. Based on the analysis of the supply chains, alternative scenarios with greater security of supply are to be developed for these and other medicines, the economic implications for national healthcare systems quantified and recommendations for policy action derived.
Carrying out Stress Tests
The dependence on China and to some extent India for supplies is particularly serious. For example, Europe has to rely predominantly or even completely on Chinese manufacturers to supply many essential medicines. But what happens if one or more of these manufacturers fail? If capacities are insufficient and active ingredients are sold to other countries because they pay more, or even if geopolitical reasons lead to a supply stop? Stress tests simulate precisely such scenarios in order to find out how long the German population can be supplied with vital medicines before significant damage to health occurs.
Transparency studies are carried out in preparation for the stress tests. The aim of these studies is to analyse the global supply chains for the individual active ingredients from both a chemical-pharmaceutical and a business perspective. The most important processes and the associated "players" were identified, their supply capacities determined and cost and competitive structures analysed.
These transparency studies also revealed how complex and at the same time opaque the current global supply chains are. Even most experts from politics and business seem to be unaware of which suppliers manufacture the active ingredients and other preliminary products for our medicines at which locations. "This makes it all the more important that we have the support of Dr Weidenauer and Dr Schweizer, experts who not only have outstanding pharmaceutical expertise, but also provide detailed information on global supply chains and valuable expert contacts for our studies," says Ulrike Holzgrabe.
Funding From the Vogel Foundation
Support from students and scientific staff is needed to carry out the transparency studies and stress tests. Funding plays a decisive role here. On this front, we were recently able to report a great success: The Vogel Foundation Dr Eckernkamp and the Unibund honoured the project with a research funding award worth 25,000 euros.
"This is a good starting point for attracting more scientists to the project in the future and thus realising the studies," explains Andrea Szczesny. To this end, two positions for doctoral students are also to be filled in the near future.
The knowledge gained from the stress tests will also form the basis for future applications for funding.
Contact
Prof. Dr Richard Pibernik, Chair of Logistics and Quantitative Methods in Business Administration, Tel: 49 931 31-80243, e-mail: richard.pibernik@uni-wuerzburg.de
Prof. Dr Andrea Szczesny, Chair of Business Administration, Controlling and Internal Management Accounting, Tel: +49 931 31-80961, e-mail: andrea.szczesny@uni-wuerzburg.de
Senior-Prof. Dr Ulrike Holzgrabe, Institute of Pharmacy and Food Chemistry, Tel: +49 931 31-85461, e-mail: ulrike.holzgrabe@uni-wuerzburg.de
