The importance of improving demand forecasting

IAVIReportOnline.org reports on new efforts to improve demand forecasting

To help with the task of creating these forecasts, PPPs and NGOs are seeking the advice of economists, industry forecasters, and consulting groups. IAVI, the Accelerated Development and Introduction Plans (ADIPs) for pneumococcal and rotavirus vaccines (PneumoADIP and RotaADIP, respectively) coordinated by the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, and the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health's (PATH's) Malaria Vaccine Initiative are each currently developing (or have recently conducted) strategic demand assessment research. And the Center for Global Development (CGD) is in the process of holding a series of stakeholder workshops over the course of this year to gain consensus on how best to share data, techniques, and principles for demand assessments of vaccines and other medicines.

These are crucial issues: we have reported here about the possibility of the UN having a role in demand forecasting, and here about the huge human costs of failure to forecast demand accurately.  The need (as distinct from demand) for vaccines and drugs for most infectious diseases is predictable - the burden of disease does not vary much from one year to another.  So if demand is volatile, this is mainly a man-made problem: demand volatility must be largely due to erratic behaviour by donors and (probably to a lesser extent) regulators and developing country partners.  The costs of this unpredictability are borne by suppliers and, ultimately, by the world's poor whose access to affordable and reliable supplies of essential medicines is jeopardized by this unpredictability.  There is a clear win for everyone if we can increase the predictability of demand.  Suppliers will get the certainty they need to invest in large-scale production; donors will get more bang for their buck; and developing countries will get more stable and lower cost supplies of the medicines they need.