Supply Chain Information System Maturity Model

The USAID Digital Strategy 2020-2024 alongside The Vision for Action in Digital Health outline USAID’s deliberate and holistic commitment to strengthen open, inclusive, and secure digital ecosystems in support of governments' initiatives to help people live freer, healthier, and more prosperous lives. Digital ecosystems encompass the collective stakeholders, systems, and enabling environments that empower people and communities to use digital technology to gain access to services, engage with each other, or pursue economic opportunities. These digital ecosystems are transforming how people access information, goods, services, and opportunities.

GHSC-PSM is committed to continuous improvement in health outcomes and to explore innovations that may contribute to this end. As global health supply chains expand and become more complex, the information systems that are used to manage them need to mature along with them.

USAID’s Supply Chain Information System Maturity Model helps countries evaluate their supply chain systems’ capabilities holistically, enabling informed decision-making. This is a key contributor in reducing costs, improving efficiency, and increasing the timely delivery and availability of high-quality health commodities to patients.

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National Healthcare Information Systems
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National healthcare Information Systems form the backbone of well-coordinated National Healthcare Supply Chains. They are instrumental in facilitating consistent coordination across the entire supply chain, by providing end-to-end visibility, agility, and, more importantly, ensuring patient safety.

A holistic approach results in more effective systems, enabling managers to maintain visibility along the entire supply chain. This allows them to be more proactive, and to better anticipate to changing needs, therefore reducing waste and containing costs. Lastly, enhanced traceability translates into patients increased access to high-quality, authenticity-verified commodities, contributing to better national health outcomes.

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Approaches to Information Management
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Approaches to Information Management Graphic

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GHSC-PSM Supply Chain Information System Maturity Model
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Recognizing their key role, GHSC-PSM has developed tools for national and global stakeholders to implement and support well-functioning National Healthcare Information Systems.

This tool is designed to guide supply chain actors, including governments, donors, and implementing partners and/or procurement agents, in planning and strategizing around future SCIS investments, to enhance the functionality and sustainability of the healthcare system operations.

Within the tool, maturity levels are defined to facilitate phased incremental implementation of capabilities, as the defined capabilities within each maturity level are grouped to promote stabilization of Supply Chain processes, before progressing to the next level.

SCISMM Maturity Levels Chart

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GHSC-PSM Supply Chain Information System Maturity Model Dashboards
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The capability assessment uses binary (yes/no) questions and scores are calculated as the percent of yes answers for each capability. The figure below is an illustrative example with widespread weaknesses, except for order management:

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Lastly, the Maturity Levels dashboard illustration shows a different set of strengths and weaknesses from a separate hypothetical assessment:

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To learn more about the Supply Chain Information System Maturity Model, please read Swaroop Jayaprakash and Jean Miller's blog on Achieving Data Visibility for Health Supply Chain Information Systems.

Additionally, watch our video entitled Bridging the Silos of Supply Chain Information Systems through a Holistic Maturity Model below.