SHORTAGE MANAGEMENT
Ensuring that no medicines are unavailable to patients who need them.
In 2004, CHINACHEM started a dedicated business focused on providing fully managed and regulatory compliant access for physicians and their patients to medicines that are not approved in the UK. Since then, CHINACHEM have expanded this service to offer the same access opportunities to physicians worldwide as well as working directly with pharmaceutical companies to ensure that their products can be accessed wherever a patient’s unmet clinical need requires it.
CHINACHEM provide a regulatory compliant and cost effective solution for pharmaceutical and biotech companies to make medicines available to patients where no licensed treatment option exists in their country. Examples of why patients may not have a licensed treatment option include where a medicine is new and has not yet been approved in their country, because a clinical trial in which they have been enrolled is finishing or because a previously licensed medicine has been discontinued.
In all these cases, CHINACHEM can provide a bespoke, turnkey solution which will provide patients with quick and secure access to the medicines they need.
By centralising access for patients through CHINACHEM, the pharmaceutical company will gain full visibility of demand as well as control of the information which passes to and from the healthcare provider. This access will be fully controlled by CHINACHEM in accordance with the particular commercial and clinical parameters agreed with the pharmaceutical company.
Drug Shortage Management
Minimising the impact of supply issues on the patient.
Despite the best efforts of pharmaceutical companies, the supply of medicines into markets in which they are licensed can be interrupted due to unforeseen production, supply chain or regulatory circumstances. When this happens, the key challenge for the pharmaceutical company is to ensure that the impact of this shortage on a patient’s wellbeing is minimised. This can be an especially sensitive and difficult challenge if there are patients for which there are no other clinically viable licensed alternatives available in their home market.
It is this scenario that CHINACHEM work with pharmaceutical companies to quickly source an alternative medicine from outside the affected market and make it available to the patients impacted upon by the shortage.
All aspects of this service can be fully managed by CHINACHEM, from the identification of alternative medicines to the planning and delivery of a communication strategy within the affected market and liaison with prescribers to ensure ongoing demand is met. All this will be undertaken in strict compliance to all of the applicable regulations governing the sourcing, importation and supply of a medicine which is unlicensed in the affected market. This service can remain in place for as long as is required to re-establish the reliable supply of the medicine.
With a temporary supply solution in place, the pharmaceutical company can focus time and resource into resolving the supply issue in the safe knowledge that patients’ ongoing treatment needs have been fully satisfied.
