A Model to Assess Supply Risk for Antibiotics in Swedish Context : Analysis of Supply Structure of 39 Selected Antibiotics

The gap between demand and supply for antibiotics in the healthcare sector has seen a steady growth over the past decades, further increasing the risk of antibiotic resistance and unavailability in the Swedish healthcare sector and market. The thesis is part of the work of the multisectoral platform, PLATINEA, which is working towards better availability of antibiotics. This study focuses on analysing the supply structure of antibiotics and pharmaceutical supply chains using a risk assessment model. A literature review of previous research has been done to identify risk factors, understand their importance and develop the risk assessment model. The risk assessment model uses these risk factors to assess the supply risk of an antibiotic. The study is designed in a quantitative manner, where the antibiotics are classified as very high, high, medium, and low risk of shortage using risk scores. Expert opinions were collected using a self-completion questionnaire, in which experts allocate weights that measure the importance of said risk factors. Weights were used to measure value of risk for antibiotics using MCDA process. The outcomes of the study are (1). the weights of risk factors given by industry experts, (2). the developed multi-criteria risk assessment model, (3). ranking of selected 39 antibiotics from high to low supply risk, based on re-assessed risk scores