Medicines and Health Technologies

Access to safe, effective, quality-assured, and affordable medicines and health technologies is essential for achieving universal health coverage and the health-related Sustainable Development Goals. However, there are still significant gaps in the availability, affordability, and proper use of essential medicines, vaccines, diagnostics, and medical devices worldwide. Effective monitoring and evaluation (M&E) systems are important for identifying these gaps, understanding their root causes, and guiding evidence-based policies and programs.

WHO helps Member States improve M&E systems throughout the pharmaceutical and health technology value chain. This includes research and development, regulatory approval, prequalification, procurement, supply chain management, clinical use, and patient outcomes. This broad approach ensures that challenges are recognized and addressed at every stage, from manufacturing facilities to pharmacy shelves to patient bedsides.

The associated pages include resources that contain medicines or health technologies in their scope. These resources have been developed by various technical units across WHO Headquarters and Regional Offices. We have curated them here to provide a comprehensive set of tools and information for stakeholders involved in monitoring and evaluating health technologies globally.

Related Links

This platform organises WHO's extensive M&E resources into four complementary categories that together provide a comprehensive toolkit for monitoring pharmaceutical and health technology systems:

Access Indicators: Metrics and measurement frameworks for tracking progress toward access goals, including availability and affordability indicators, coverage statistics, equity measures, and standardised approaches for assessing access across populations and geographies.

Assessment Tools: Standardised methodologies, survey instruments, and analytical frameworks for systematically evaluating pharmaceutical systems, including pricing, availability, supply chain performance, prescribing patterns, and adherence to quality standards.

Databases: Curated repositories of essential information, including national essential medicines lists, prequalified products, international nonproprietary names, medicine prices, vaccine procurement data, and technical specifications that provide reference standards and enable comparative analysis.

Surveillance Tools: Systems for ongoing monitoring and early warning, including adverse event reporting platforms, antimicrobial resistance surveillance networks, substandard and falsified product detection systems, and disease-specific monitoring programs.

Together, these resources support evidence-based decision-making, promote transparency and accountability, facilitate international cooperation, and enable countries to strengthen their pharmaceutical systems in pursuit of universal health coverage.

Disclaimers:

• These sources have been consolidated by the Department of Medicines and Health Products Policies and Standards, but links are maintained by various WHO global technical teams. Please report broken links to hps@who.int and we will try to contact the appropriate technical team for resolution.
• This website is continuously in development. In case you would like to add a new WHO information source, please contact the Department of Medicines and Health Products Policies and Standards at hps@who.int
• This resource contains only WHO-published tools and does not include those from other global health partners.