September 5, 2015 – The OpenLMIS community received a big vote of confidence with a new, $2.5 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to enhance and support the OpenLMIS community infrastructure and to further develop OpenLMIS as a recognized and accessible tool for management of in-country health supply chains, contributing to better data-for-decision-making and improved health supply chain performance for low- and middle income countries.

With over four years of investment from multiple partners, OpenLMIS is already improving the availability of health commodities in Benin, Mozambique, Tanzania and Zambia. Additional deployments are planned in Cote d’Ivoire and Malawi. Over the next two years, this new funding will help the OpenLMIS Community expand its vision and impact in the following ways:

• Develop OpenLMIS as a robust platform that meets country and partner needs including configurability, extensibility and interoperability with existing systems. This includes adding contributions from current deployments in Tanzania and Zambia, the first implementations of OpenLMIS at a national scale, creating shared benefit and investment for all OpenLMIS community members.
• Strengthen the OpenLMIS community of developers, funders and implementers. This includes a product roadmap, publishing standards for collaboration, developing governance and technical working groups, and expanding the group of stakeholders supporting OpenLMIS as an effective supply chain management solution.
• Provide support for new OpenLMIS opportunities. Support consists of promoting OpenLMIS to global and in-country stakeholders, and ensuring countries and implementers have the necessary information, resources and technical guidance to support successful deployments.

OpenLMIS provides a solution to common and wide-spread supply chain challenges of low-and-middle income countries — where the distribution of medicines currently relies on a fragmented mix of information systems that often focus on isolated parts of the supply chain or a single health program.

OpenLMIS provides a solution to common and wide-spread supply chain challenges of low-and-middle income countries — where the distribution of medicines currently relies on a fragmented mix of information systems that often focus on isolated parts of the supply chain or a single health program. With OpenLMIS, supply chain managers have a more comprehensive, accurate and timely view into health supply chains.

The OpenLMIS community already comprises a number of developers, implementers, governments and funders working to improve health supply chains – getting contraceptives, vaccines, and other life-saving health commodities to people who need them most, especially those in remote and hard-to-reach areas. OpenLMIS Community stakeholders will meet monthly to discuss priorities, technical questions and governance. Meetings are open to anyone who wants to get involved. The first meeting is scheduled for September 28-30th in Washington D.C.

If you would like to engage further with the OpenLMIS community, please join the OpenLMIS mailing list to receive updates on OpenLMIS progress, including future community meetings, status on the Product Roadmap, and other outputs as they are created. For more information please also visit the OpenLMIS wiki page.