A COVAX Supply System Designer: COVAX-SSD

The Access-To-Medicines team developed models for vaccine supply system design, incorporating decisions on manufacturing, warehousing and transportation (capacity and location) as well as vaccine flow (volume and allocation). The models focus on new candidate vaccines ready for scale-up: models for five neglected tropical diseases are ready, a Covid-19 model is underway and other future vaccines, such as HIV, are envisioned. In order to make this generic modeling environment available to decision makers, a user-friendly, web-based decision support tool needs to be developed. Targeted users will be decision makers on a global scale from public, non-profit and private sector. This user-centered tool is conceptualized as ‘living’, as it adapts to the evolving body of knowledge and data that become available as fundamental and technological vaccine research develops over time, as with the current Covid-19 vaccine candidates. Important elements are data security, database sanity and open coding to preserve sustainability. In addition, an educational and training module will be integrated for broad and global knowledge dissemination.