ArticleBulletin of the World Health Organization2021
European collaborations on medicine and vaccine procurement.
Article in Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 22 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
22 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- The structural and organizational aspects of human papillomavirus vaccine affecting immunization coverage in Europe: a systematic review.BMC public health · 2025Pooled it
- Progress, impacts and lessons from market shaping in the past decade: a systematic review.Frontiers in public health · 2025Pooled it
- Collaborating for Affordable Patient Access to Medicines: Review of the First Decade of the Beneluxa Initiative in Pharmaceutical Policy.Applied health economics and health policy · 2026Review
- The Price of National Pharmaceutical Pricing in the EU: A Proposal for "Common Procurement".Applied health economics and health policy · 2026Review
- Medicine price and affordability in China and selected ASEAN countries: a cross-country comparison with forward-looking implications for regional pooled procurement.BMC medicine · 2026Article
- Public procurement of cardiac implantable electronic devices across Europe: are we purchasing value or cost-effectiveness?Europace : European pacing, arrhythmias, and cardiac electrophysiology : journal of the working groups on cardiac pacing, arrhythmias, and cardiac cellular electrophysiology of the European Society of Cardiology · 2026Article
- Future-Proofing European Pharmaceutical Regulatory and Market Access Practices Based on EU Learnings from the COVID-19 Pandemic: Insights from Multi-Stakeholder Interviews.Therapeutic innovation & regulatory science · 2026Article
- Drug price dynamics following changes in procurement method in the public healthcare setting in Malaysia.PloS one · 2026Article
- From Vision to Reality: The EU's Pharmaceutical Reforms and the Path to Improved Access.PharmacoEconomics - open · 2025Article
- Corruption risks in COVID-19 vaccine deployment: lessons learned for future pandemic preparedness.Globalization and health · 2025Article
- Health Security inequalities in Non-EU European Countries: A Cross-National Comparative Assessment Using an Integrated MCDM-Machine Learning Approach.F1000Research · 2025Article
- Impact of China's National Volume-Based Drug Procurement: A Multilevel Interrupted Time Series Analysis on Medical Expenditures in Hypertensive Patients.International journal of health policy and management · 2025Article
- Policy options for sustainable access to off-patent antibiotics in Europe.npj antimicrobials and resistance · 2024Review
- A Scoping Review of Factors Affecting COVID-19 Vaccination Uptake and Deployment in Global Healthcare Systems.Vaccines · 2024Article
- Opportunities and Challenges in Cross-Country Collaboration: Insights from the Beneluxa Initiative.Journal of market access & health policy · 2024Article
- Clinical and non-clinical aspects of reimbursement policy for orphan drugs in selected European countries.Frontiers in pharmacology · 2024Article
- Innovations in pharmaceutical policies and learnings for sustainable access to affordable medicines.Journal of pharmaceutical policy and practice · 2024Article
- Hybrid model: a promising type of public procurement in the healthcare sector of the European Union.Frontiers in public health · 2024Article
- Does structural form matter? A comparative analysis of pooled procurement mechanisms for health commodities.Globalization and health · 2023Article
- A National Cancer Grid pooled procurement initiative, India.Bulletin of the World Health Organization · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
To ensure equitable access to medicines and vaccines, organizational efforts and purchase volumes have been pooled in joint procurements and negotiations for decades in some regions of the world, as well as globally through supranational procurement mechanisms. In Europe, countries started to collaborate on procurement and negotiations recently when it became increasingly difficult to ensure access to high-priced medicines, even in high-income countries. Two European country collaborations (the Nordic Pharmaceutical Forum and the Baltic Procurement Initiative) have successfully concluded at least one joint tender process for medicines and vaccines and the Beneluxa Initiative has concluded its first successful joint price negotiation. This article describes the experiences of these country collaborations. Challenges observed included: legal barriers; institutional and organizational differences between health-care systems in member countries; and the risk that suppliers will be reluctant to cooperate with country collaborations. Although these collaborations helped improve access to medicines and vaccines for the countries involved, in situations such as a global health crisis, larger-scale, more-inclusive initiatives are needed. In the current coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX) initiative established a global procurement mechanism to ensure the equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines globally. Despite differences in organization and scale, the European country collaborations and COVAX have some similarities: (i) their success depends on the increased purchasing power associated with pooled order volumes; (ii) expert knowledge and previous procurement experience is pooled; (iii) they perform other collaborative activities that go beyond procurement alone; and (iv) they actively involve external partners and stakeholders.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.