The Ministry of Health of Ukraine together with the Medical Procurement of Ukraine launched a pilot stock management system for medicines and medical devices, e-Stock. The main consumer of the functionality is healthcare institutions. Through the e-Stock system, they will submit requests for the necessary medicines and medical devices to be procured at public expense. This will optimize the process of collecting needs, make it more efficient and more systematic.

At the first stage, the modules for collecting requests and user management have been launched.

The purpose of the pilot is to test and, if necessary, refine the functionality of collecting the needs for medicines and medical devices so that in future it covers all medical products to be procured by Ukraine for patients.

“Every year Ukraine allocates significant funds for the procurement of medicines, but patients do not always have information about their availability. On the other hand, the lack of an integrated system that would allow tracking, evaluation of procurement, distribution and accounting of medicines leads to gaps in planning. Therefore, the purpose of implementing the e-Stock is to improve stock management for medicines and medical devices. For patients personally, this means accessibility of information about medicines,” says Deputy Minister of Health for Digital Development Maria Karchevych.

“Previously, the needs for medical products to be procured by the state for Ukrainians were collected in most cases at the regional level. Some goods were procured by the Medical Procurement of Ukraine, others by international specialized organizations. There was a lack of a solution that would aggregate all this data at the hospital user level and standardize the collection of needs regardless of who is the procurer in a particular area. The e-Stock needs collection functionality solves this problem. It will allow us to see the big picture and plan the procurement process better,” explains Alona Zhuzha, Deputy General Manager for IT Development, Medical Procurement of Ukraine.

Collection of needs and user management is the first stage of the e-Stock implementation. In general, by the end of 2023, it is planned to complete the full functionality: modules of procurement, logistics, accounting of balances, and public data.

It is worth mentioning that e-Stock will collect a full cycle of data on the circulation of medical products. The system will aggregate information on the needs, delivery, availability of medicines in hospitals, their use, disposal, etc.

162 healthcare institutions and relevant structural units of regional and Kyiv city military administrations are already connected to the system and will submit their needs for medical products for 2023 through e-Stock in the categories of “adult oncology”, “endoprostheses and transplantation kits”.

The pilot system was launched with the support of international partners: USAID Safe, Affordable, and Effective Medicines for Ukrainians (SAFEMed) project and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.