Assessment of medical countermeasures-related actions and interventions

What is the issue?

The European Health and Digital Executive Agency (HADEA) and the Directorate-General for Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (DG-HERA) are responsible for helping the European Union (EU) to be better prepared to respond to cross-border health threats. Part of this involves better health security coordination, including the coordination of supply of medical countermeasures (MCMs), including medical devices and personal protective equipment (PPE). As part of this, the Commission recently published the EU Medical Countermeasures Strategy, which outlines activities that the Union will take towards improving preparedness against cross-border health threats in collaboration with member states.

How are we helping?

RAND Europe, in collaboration with IQVIA, Technopolis Group and Airfinity, are supporting with the identification and analysis of potential new and existing MCMs and assessing MCM-related actions and interventions, with an aim to address the EU’s need for actionable intelligence on the availability, supply chains and shortage prevention mechanisms for MCMs. RAND Europe is leading the latter task, and as such will:

• Verify and identify financial and non-financial mechanisms that support access to MCMs
• Analyse the costs and effectiveness of these mechanisms
• Analyse the application of these mechanisms under different scenarios.

As part of this work, the study team will:

• Review existing financial and non-financial support mechanisms relevant to medical countermeasures, drawing on desk research and expert consultations.
• Develop and test a methodology to estimate financial requirements for and assess the impact of identified mechanisms to improve MCM accessibility and availability.
• Test this model under varying epidemiological or geopolitical contexts, reflecting how different demand scenarios interact with the model.