On July 2, 2003, representatives from the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM), the World Bank (WB) and the U.S. Government (USG), including the State Department, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), HHS, HRSA, and USAID, met to discuss issues related to pharmaceutical management at the country level in the face of the expected scale-up of HIV/AIDS care and treatment programs.

The objectives of this meeting were to—

• Identify HIV/AIDS commodity management issues of concern to key global partners
  
  
• Determine interest in promoting coordinated efforts in the area of strengthening the HIV/AIDS commodity management system
  
  
• Discuss the potential for establishing an on-going process or mechanism for consultation, coordination, and information sharing

Based on this meeting, Management Sciences for Health (MSH), through its Center for Pharmaceutical Management (CPM), made the decision to review options that would facilitate information sharing and to implement development of such a system for purposes of tracking initiatives that target HIV/AIDS-related pharmaceuticals and other commodities.

After an analysis of needs and possible options; MSH determined that a Web-based information tracking system, centrally maintained and accessible to all stakeholders, would be the preferred approach for keeping track of multi-faceted, rapidly changing information.

Using the results from the preliminary analysis as a conceptual guideline, MSH staff, with the support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation through the SEAM Program, worked closely with Synergy International Systems in the licensing and adaptation of their commercial-off-the-shelf software for the HIV/AIDS-related commodities tracking system.

The HIV/AIDS commodities tracking tool will be populated with data collected, entered, and maintained by MSH staff. This latter activity is being supported by the USAID-funded RPM Plus Program.

Once the impact of the initial work has been evaluated, consideration will be given to the expansion of the database to include—

• Other HIV/AIDS donor programs and recipient countries
  
  
• Information on availability, price, and use of HIV/AIDS commodities, including standard treatment guidelines
  
  
• Tracking the impact of donor programs through linkages to databases for national health statistics

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