In November 2022, i+solutions was very proud to be informed that it had won a contract with the Stop TB Partnership’s Global Drug Facility (GDF) to provide procurement services of anti-tuberculosis medicines. GDF, which is hosted by UNOPS, is a procurement and supply mechanism that provides tuberculosis (TB) programmes with strategic procurement of TB products and coordination of market activities, with technical assistance and capacity-building.

In late 2022, i+solutions formed a project implementation team – in close collaboration with GDF – to be ready to process GDF orders as quickly as possible. This multidisciplinary team focussed on all the critical elements which were required to start the contract. Broadly speaking, these requirements related to people, processes and systems. Although from a high-level perspective, the processes and requirements are similar for other procurement work i+solutions executes, this project has a key, unique requirement: a strategic rotating stockpile of anti-TB medicines. i+solutions sub-contracted a warehouse facility in The Netherlands to perform this function. The warehouse is managed by The Medical Export Group in Vuren, The Netherlands. This service represents a further string to i+solutions’ bow and it can claim warehousing as a new facet to the procurement and supply services it offers to its donors and clients.

From an operational point of view, i+solutions began accepting GDF client requests in early June 2023, roughly 4 months earlier than GDF had originally anticipated. This is testament to the excellent project management/implementation approach i+solutions uses. By the end of 2023, i+solutions had processed requests totalling $129M and delivered shipments together worth $5M.