Nigerian e-health startup Field Intelligence, which is digitising the supply chain and transforming access to essential, life-saving medicine, claims to have saved the Nigerian government US$2 million in losses that would have been attributed to expired medication in the last five years.
Founded in 2015, Field Intelligence is the leading pharmaceutical supply chain provider within Nigeria and Kenya, that aims to reshape the pharma value chain by turning the supply chain underlying it into a strategic tool for access and growth.
The startup works collaboratively with African governments by delivering and scaling healthcare programmes, whilst catering for Africa’s small private pharmacies, by providing data led technology that aids inventory management and access to products.
Field, which earlier this year announced its expansion into 11 new cities across Nigeria and Kenya as it crossed the 1.4 million threshold of serviced patients, recently compiled data from the last five years of its product Field Supply, a health logistics management platform. The results show the platform enabled the Government of Nigeria to optimise its supply chains and averted US$2 million in losses that would have otherwise been accredited to expiry.
Additionally, Field’s platform has so far enabled the Nigerian government to deliver over 220 million pharmaceutical interventions and 1.94 billion units, significantly improving overall healthcare in the country and the availability of life-saving medicines.
Since the Field Supply software has been installed in over 35,000 institutions across the country, it has been responsible for reducing the frequency of stockouts for antimalarial drugs at point of care by 52 per cent, and for modern contraception by 57 per cent.
“Wastage is such a critical issue in healthcare systems where every unit of stock is so important, and supply chains are frequently both sprawling and opaque. It’s one of the key issues that we’re addressing with our technology and pharmacy services. With large, irregular inventory purchases and poor visibility into how the stock is moving, expiries have come to be expected – when they are tracked at all. Our goal is to literally eradicate that wastage,” said Justin Lorenzon, Field’s CTO.
“The results over the last five years, as the data shows, have been really encouraging, and show what can be done when governments and public health partners come together and invest in holistic solutions utilising the right tech.”
