Collaborative inventory management in tunisian healthcare sector

Abstract

Drug shortages are the most complex and critical existing problems in public hospitals; this is due to different causes like deficiencies in the supply chain of medicines and parallel trade. This problem is costly for hospitals because it can affect patient’s safety. For this, hospitals have to find solutions to protect their patients and to provide drugs in the right amount at the right time. Among solutions, which help to resolve these problems, there is the collaborative supply chain. Collaborative supply chain is-based on the interaction and collaboration between organizations in order to achieve a common goal and obtain mutual benefit. This study extends research to show the impact of collaboration between hospitals on reducing the drug shortages problem. In addition, we will investigate the importance of collaboration within horizontal supply chain, by presenting different strategies, such as placing orders in different dates, standardization of orders dates and group purchasing organization and seeing the impact of each strategy on solving the drug shortages in Tunisian healthcare sector.