VAN rolls out its biggest milestone to date

In late March, the VAN’s Consensus Planning Group came together in person for the first time since its launch three years ago during the COVID pandemic to witness the promise of a powerful new forecasting tool. The VAN CPG – a cross-organizational group – uses the VAN platform to address family planning commodity stock imbalances and prevent those imbalances from occurring at all. Participants were introduced to the VAN Demand Planning Module, which promises to significantly advance reproductive health demand forecasting across the community. Using artificial intelligence, historical shipment data are evaluated and combined with forecasted consumption, countries’ supply plans, and the VAN analysts’ own expertise. The resulting predictive analytics can help manufacturers to make more informed production decisions, procurers to plan better, and countries to be assured of adequate supplies to meet their demand.

Representatives from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, CHAI, GHSC-PSM, GHSC-TA, JSI, RHSC, SEMA, UNFPA, and USAID convened in Washington, DC, to learn how the demand planning module can change the face of demand forecasting. “Using the best industry standards, we are serving the community, helping them to make decisions on how best to plan for needed family planning products to support a healthy market,” says VAN Director Julia White. “The potential of this tool to offer more clarity to countries, procurers, manufacturers, initiatives like SEMA, and other key stakeholders is immense – perhaps the VAN’s biggest milestone since its inception.”

Category: Global FP VAN