Building healthy futures: ensuring access to medical supplies
Published on 2022-03-29 08:44:46Quality, 50 years IDA Foundation

Building healthy futures: ensuring access to medical supplies

Blog

Amsterdam, 29 March 2022 - In today’s world, medical supplies are crucial to safe and effective prevention, diagnosis, monitoring, and treatment of disease or illness, as well as for patient rehabilitation and palliation. These medical supplies must be safe, of good quality, and appropriate to the settings in which they are used. Recognising the important role of medical supplies towards reaching universal health coverage, we continue our 50th anniversary story campaign with an insight into the role of IDA’s suppliers of medical supplies and their contribution to making quality assured health care products available for all. Two of these suppliers are Poly Medicure (Polymed) and Jiangsu Allwell Medical Products (Allwell), who have been collaborating with IDA Foundation for many years.

Quality assurance of non-pharma products

One of the most challenging parts of supplying non-pharma products compared to pharmaceuticals, is that the quality standards for these products are less concrete. Besides that, norms vary for the European and Asian market. To make sure that IDA’s medical supplies meet all the different existing requirements, we have a specific team that is specialised in the quality assurance of medical supplies and other non-pharma products. This knowledgeable team helps our suppliers to meet our stringent quality standards and to obtain approval for their products. Tang Ya Jun from Allwell Medical Products wrote: “The IDA QA team audited many Chinese manufacturers. Allwell Medical Products, and other manufacturers, have learned a lot from these audits. Throughout our collaboration with IDA Foundation, we have improved our quality management system after professional guidance and advice from the IDA QA team.”  

Collaboration and growth

Our quality-assured medical supplies are available to our customers thanks to the strong, long-standing relationships we have with our suppliers who share our commitment to quality. We value these relationships and recognise that in order to achieve our goals, we must grow together. Sujit Gupta (Associate VP) from PolyMed shared that "it has always been a great learning and knowledge-sharing experience while meeting and interacting with IDA’s efficient and knowledgeable team.”  Mr. Gupta added that this offered a learning platform for employees as well, and that this could contribute to a growing career curve.  From IDA's perspective, this is mutual: we highly value sharing knowledge and experience with our supplier partners around the world, as this can broaden our insights as well.

Shared impact

Thanks to close collaboration between our QA team and our suppliers, we are able to ensure access to medicines and medical supplies and make an impact globally. Sujit Gupta from Poly Medicure mentioned: “Our vision of serving people through innovative healthcare solutions is aligned with IDA’s mission of providing quality products at an affordable price for all. This collaboration has helped us to establish ourselves as one of the leading healthcare companies in the world.” By growing along with our suppliers, we ensure the production of those products that are most in demand. Tang Ya Jun from Allwell Medical Products emphasises this: “Through IDA Foundation we have supplied a variety of products to many low- and middle-income countries, we have learnt the product structure for different products per country and expanded our product range accordingly.”

Future perspectives

COVID-19 impacted global health immensely. When looking at the future, we realise we need to keep evolving, we need to be ready for the unexpected and serve those who need it the most. Aside from the need for pharmaceuticals and vaccines, medical supplies such as Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) were in very high demand. Sujit Gupta from Poly Medicure wrote: “With the Covid-19 pandemic prevailing since the last two years, everyone has realised that healthcare is an investment for the future. It has taught us the need to advocate for national funding to address gaps in healthcare systems and health infrastructure, as well as providing support to the most vulnerable countries. Investing now will save lives and money later.” Together with our suppliers, we feel committed to providing high-quality and affordable products by embracing new technologies and serving countries in need. 

Although medical supplies are crucial to global health, it also constitutes a considerable source of waste and requires global transport. At IDA, sustainability is fundamental to our strategic goal of sustainable value chains. We are committed to moving forward with our sustainability journey and recognise that our suppliers are critical facilitators of our sustainable growth and overall success. In the coming years, we aim to minimise negative impacts while maximising positive influence across our supply chain, taking into account all applicable social, economic, and environmental factors, and we will engage with our suppliers to accelerate sustainable progress.

Our 50th anniversary

We are proud that 2022 marks the year of our 50th anniversary and look forward to celebrating this special moment with those who have a stake in our success, such as our suppliers. We thank Sujit Gupta (PolyMed) and Tang Ya Jun (Allwell) for insights for this article.

Visit our Suppliers page for more information, and find our other 50th anniversary stories here: