NHS England Covid Vaccine Supply Chain

With multiple vaccinations in the trial when Hatmill was engaged to provide strategic advice for both the supply chain and physical logistics solution, nothing was certain. We deployed an expert and agile team to work alongside NHSE, who led the programme, as well as the military and other supply chain and logistics specialists to set up two parallel operations – one for the vaccinations, and one for the other items needed to administer the vaccinations.

What was needed was a supply chain more complex than a grocery retailer, with multiple, regularly changing demands – sometimes hour-by-hour, and with the additional pressure of an international profile.

The known unknowns and changeable nature of the situation demanded intelligent design and scenario planning. When the first vaccine – Pfizer – was approved, it needed to be stored at -70 Celsius, would be supplied in packs of 1000 vaccinations, and would last just 120 hours once defrosted. It also had logistics challenges, such as only being allowed to travel for two journeys for a maximum of 12 hours in total once thawed.

The temperature was a challenge requiring specialist warehousing and transport in the logistics system. On the other end, the receiving vaccination centres, especially care homes, needed medical-grade storage to maximise the life of the vaccine and so the number of people who could receive it. As part of our involvement, we sourced and distributed specialist cool boxes to enable the vaccines to be received and stored.

There were many more changes as the vaccination programme progressed, from introducing new brands of vaccines with different storage and transport requirements to dealing with bad weather and reacting to changes in demand profiles as new guidelines became known.

In 2021 when the booster programme was scaled up, all eligible adults were offered a booster by December. This meant capacity needed to double, delivering up to five million vaccinations a week at peak. We ramped up deliveries and demand planning to ensure this was possible and worked with the Department for Business Enterprise Industry and Skills (BEIS) to forecast delivery profiles for each vaccination location against inbound profiles.

Sophisticated supply chain 

The supply chain that we were central to designing and deploying became one of the most sophisticated in the world. We created new systems to map demand profiles based on demographics, rather than respond to pull requests from the 2000+ vaccination locations.

We developed advanced and adaptable final mile logistics, which needed to get doses to locations ranging from care homes and GP surgeries to hospitals and roving vaccination buses.

Ensuring regional equity was critical and having the data to prove that cohorts and populations all over England had fair access to vaccinations was a critical demand from the government. With financial incentives for some sites to deliver vaccinations, but limited stock due to manufacturing constraints, ensuring vaccines were administered based on need and demographics was a top priority. Our intelligent system design meant sites could only order vaccines within tightly controlled volumes in line with their population density. We also worked hard with stakeholders, including NHS regional directors and MPs, to help them understand why demand was being managed so tightly.

The enhanced ordering and inventory control management platform we developed enabled sites to eventually control their stock within strict parameters. Additional data analytics we created alongside our data expert partner Efficio, ensured they knew about delivery slots and could plan clinics.

Our demand profile planning was constantly updated and adjusted looking at population density to ensure the right cohorts would be able to get their vaccination in the right sequence. We used this data to support and challenge regions to ensure the vaccine delivery was in line with the government guidelines.

When other vaccination brands were approved, they came with their own storage and usage requirements – including exclusions for some age groups, which we built into the system. Demand planning stepped up another level when second doses started to be administered, as we needed to plan for first and second doses, matching the brand required and any restrictions, for example midway through the vaccination programme the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) decided the Astra Zeneca vaccine wasn’t to be given to under 40’s.

Using our sophisticated data models, we were able to advise BEIS about how many vaccination doses were needed for England to support its purchase strategy.