Vulnerable Supply Chains in a Health Emergency: Australia, Local Manufacturing, and 3D Printing

The response to the COVID-19 crisis highlighted the weaknesses of the free trade system and failures of the traditional supply chains. Public health preparedness for pandemics is flawed if national governments heavily depend on third parties instead of increasing their local production of medical supplies.Globally connected local production, enabled by digital fabrication tools, is arguably the best policy response to collaboratively address supply-chain vulnerabilities. 3D printing technology, which is the most prominent manifestation of digital fabrication ecosystems, can play a key role in enhancing the local production capacity in a time- and cost-efficient manner. This submission calls upon the Australian Government to increase its focus on local production of personal protective equipment (PPE) and proposes a more systematic and organized use of onshore 3D printing capabilities to address shortages of critical medical equipment in a health emergency. This submission also addresses intellectual property dimensions of local manufacturing with a key focus on compulsory licensing of patents to address shortages of critically needed medical equipment.