Our Foundation is proud to have partnered with Transparency International (UK) and the Open Contracting Partnership to produce a report examining the utility of open contracting in healthcare procurement.

Healthcare and public procurement both suffer from high levels of corruption. The point at which they converge, procurement within healthcare, is an acute vulnerability that is routinely exploited. But governments and civil society organisations are now taking action to protect the lives of citizens by implementing open contracting.

The proposition behind open contracting is that procurement reform requires a broad base of participation from outside government to keep it transparent and ensure fair pricing. Businesses must be able to compete for contracts and make sense of the market. The communities directly affected by procurement are often better placed than government to independently monitor the procurement process. To facilitate this participation, governments must publish relevant and timely information about the procurement process.

Healthcare and anti-corruption efforts share a common principle: prevention is better than cure. In the long term, open contracting offers a route for governments to move from corrupt, wasteful and inefficient procurement, towards clean contracting, in which fairness, integrity and efficiency are the norms.

Our work procuring oncology drugs in Ukraine features as an example the successful implementation of open contracting in healthcare procurement in the TI(UK) report.  By introducing international standard processes and tackling corruption with the Ministry of Health, we helped achieve savings of 38% on the cost of paediatric oncology drugs, and thereby saved lives.

Read the full report here.