Global Fund & VillageReach Supply Chain work- Intro to Marasi Mwencha

Owned by Rebecca Alban (Unlicensed)
Jun 26, 2020
3 min read

Date: June 25, 2020

OpenLMIS participants: Rebecca Alban (Unlicensed), Brandon Bowersox-Johnson (Joseph R, Emily B, Craig U, Rebecca A, Tapiwa M from VillageReach representing different VR workstreams also attended)

Present: Marasi Mwencha, Mouna Jarmouni, Moses Muputisi, Rizwan Safdar, Filiz Cengiz, Haruya Kato from The Global Fund; 

Objectives:

  • debrief about our Transition and EOI- see if they have any contacts to recommend
  • debrief on PHMF concept and see if there is a point of contact for collaboration on this
  • PCMT update

Notes:

OpenLMIS

Rebecca and Brandon provided updates on the country implementations and core partnership/transition, including the EOI and PHMF. Marasi had some questions about how this would impact countries: “would this mean there is a fee-for-service model to the chosen private partner?”. Emily and Rebecca addressed what we know now, and our criteria for the partnership around keeping OpenLMIS as a global good. Emily pointed out that there may be a different model for current countries versus for new implementations.

  • Mouna mentioned that she had a contact at the University of Oslo that might be interesting for us to reach out to re: transition

PHMF: The Global Fund is willing to have someone be involved as a point of contact as we work on the Partnership and PHMF aspects so they have some input and skin in the game. Rebecca will be the main point of contact for the OpenLMIS community making that outreach and engagement. The GF contact person is Mouna


PCMT

VillageReach provided some context and status--see Brandon background and slides below. Mouna remains the key contact for us at TGF on PCMT, and she expressed that she supports PCMT and this work. Mouna explained that country-level adoption of PCMT (and OpenLMIS) is really country-focused. The country GF contacts should be the point of collaboration. But GF did not say they are ready to support any more country-level implementation of PCMT or OpenLMIS (they may be holding their cards close). Mouna explained that she is involved in setting foundations for master data management.

Regarding the global catalogs

Mouna says that The Global Catalog is not yet ready--we do not yet have GTIN data in their item master. By Feb 2021 they should be ready to have data to share. That could feed the national product catalogs to help countries not start from scratch on NPC data. But what format will that data be in? Will it come through an NPC-compatible feed? Brandon/PCMT team should stay in touch with Mouna proactively to plan for the shape of this data. Brandon asked that we would be in touch to request an early schema or sample data. Josh Zamor and Christine Lenihan, this is an area for you both to stay engaged and weigh in so we know how these pieces will fit together in Malawi and beyond. 

Mouna says TGF have worked to make sure suppliers are compliant--GTIN, batch, expiry. Some small suppliers are not yet there. With COVID, some suppliers are asking for extensions to finish compliance.

Mouna also says they want to the GS1 requirements to improve interoperability between LMIS and HMIS. Mouna specifically talked about GS1 and HL7 FHIR being able to work together as part of their strategy. They have a concept note that Mouna can share for our feedback—BRANDON EMAILED TO ASK MOUNA FOR THIS. Josh Zamor, this sounds interesting and we probably will want the opportunity to advise on this or to tell them if we disagree with their approach.

[leaving out other topics from this long meeting that Joseph coordinated with a slide deck]

Next Steps:




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