New MOH tool to establish new standards of transparency, consistency, and efficiency in procurement
The Ministry of Health has launched a specialized workshop under the title “Developing a Multi-Criteria Data Analysis (MCDA) Tool for Post-Patent Drug Procurement.”
The event brought together representatives from the pharmaceutical and medical equipment sector, the drug control sector, specialized medical councils, and experts from inside and outside the ministry.
According to the Ministry, the initiative forms part of the Health Technology Assessment Project, a broader effort to develop institutional tools that support decision-making on scientific grounds, reports Al-Rai daily.
The workshop focused on designing and adopting a national framework to guide procurement decisions based on objective and consistent principles, with the aim of embedding it into official ministry procedures and sharing results with academic institutions.
Participants discussed criteria most relevant to Kuwait’s healthcare system, defining evaluation levels for each and applying the SMART swing methodology to prioritize and assign weights through live voting.
The next phase will involve field testing the tool by procurement teams, preparing a detailed report on usability, data availability, and feedback. A follow-up workshop will then refine the tool before it is formally adopted into procurement regulations.
The ministry explained that the outcome will be a digital tool that enables the comparison of alternatives, automatic scoring, and the generation of visual reports to aid decision-makers. A peer-reviewed study will also be prepared to document the methodology and its policy implications, reinforcing institutional learning and transparency in the pharmaceutical sector.
Assistant Undersecretary for External Health Services and Director of the Health Technology Assessment Project, Dr. Hisham Kalander, stressed that procurement decisions should not rely solely on price. The MCDA framework, he said, ensures that quality, safety, supply reliability, and added value are weighed alongside cost, thereby enhancing governance and improving outcomes for patients.
The Ministry underlined that the tool will establish new standards of transparency, consistency, and efficiency in procurement, in line with international best practices already applied in pharmaceutical reimbursements and healthcare technology acquisition worldwide.
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