ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses the ways in which the healthcare environment, with its many conflicting perspectives and agendas, can be more easily understood hopefully enabling the process and outcomes to be managed more advantageously. Medicines are a fundamental pillar of modern healthcare, yet they are no ordinary commodity. The need to ensure that patients have access to medicines as prescribed is paramount for manufacturing companies and is aligned with the professional and commercial intentions of every other party. The systematic approach necessarily collects ideas and thoughts from stakeholders who have knowledge of and direct interest in the future. The system is complex and the law of unintended consequences will be applied if the relationships between supply chain partners, stakeholders and customers are not fully understood. Le Chatelier's principle of dynamic equilibrium forces describes the way in which a system which is currently at equilibrium or in balance will tend to react if a change in that position is imposed.