While it features real solutions, final content will undergo review by a technical working group and incorporate feedback from a validation workshop planned for December 2020. Please see these as examples only, and not a definitive list.
Solution /Innovation:

OIE Sustainable Laboratories Tool

Link Envelope
Verified

Organization:

World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE)

https://www.oie.int/

For more information:

Technical contact:
Ms. Jennifer Lasley, MPH
Programme Manager, Sustainable Laboratories
World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE)
j.lasley@oie.int
Additional contacts:
Karim Tounkara
OIE Regional Representative for Africa
World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE)
k.tounkara@oie.int
More info, related website links:

https://www.oie.int/fileadmin/Home/eng/Support_to_OIE_Members/pdf/OIE_PVS_Pathway_Laboratory_Manual_2014.pdf
Categories:
Camel, Dairy, Frameworks and tools, Healthy diets & Nutrition, One Health, Other breed, Pig, Poultry, and Red meat
Has been implemented in:
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Challenge

Diagnostic laboratories support disease surveillance and early detection of disease. Laboratories conduct important research to support detection, risk management, and control. They handle and store pathogens that are potentially hazardous to humans, animals, and plants.
Inefficient and ineffective laboratories make ensuring the timeliness and accuracy of their product—results—more difficult. This situation can quickly erase progress made through investments in capacity building and can hinder progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals.
Traditional laboratory evaluations assess technical capacity and suggest technical improvements in the context of short-term partner-funded projects. As this technical assistance is generally constrained by the project’s objectives, they often do not allow for big picture examination of the national laboratory system’s sustainability.
Often, this leads to simplified technical recommendations and over-investment in structures that are systematically unable to implement the recommendations properly. These challenges are further perpetuated by underlying complications, such as insufficient budget allocations, lack of human and physical resources, or procurement difficulties, and go unaddressed in the mid- to long-term.
To address these challenges and as a complement to traditional semi-quantitative approaches to evaluate laboratory capacity, the OIE developed in 2011 the Sustainable Laboratories Tool to address challenges to laboratories’ financial and strategic sustainability.

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Solution

The Sustainable Laboratories Tool is a model developed to understand the system’s sustainability in the national context, taking into consideration public, private, and external demand for laboratory services. The model simulates, based on data provided by the participating laboratories, the real cost of laboratory analysis and helps laboratory system leaders to understand what resources they have, what activities they do, who their clients are, and what their clients need from them.

The Sustainable Laboratories Tool helps Members to determine the true cost of laboratory analysis by uncovering the hidden value of capital investments and their impact on operating expenditures
Finally, laboratory experts assisting countries in this approach appraise the pertinence and fitness for purpose of the national laboratory system structure and organisation and present options and elements for strategic decision making to lab management and the Veterinary Services based on simulations that are likely to occur over the next 5-10 years. Virtual approaches to delivery of this expertise are under development, as well as additional components and revised tools for expanded and easy access to mission outputs.
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Impact

The Sustainable Laboratories Tool has been implemented in 16 countries and has been shown to be useful to countries in better understand the challenges to financial sustainability that they face, advocating for their needs, gaining confidence in interactions, and implementing cross-cutting systems building activities like biological risk and quality management systems.

OIE has trained a group of laboratory management experts to use the tool and lead missions with laboratory system leaders in countries through the development of scenarios and options that reflect the likely changes in demand for laboratory services in the future.
The next edition of the tool will be available to all OIE Members and data entry forms and dashboards will be available for viewing. Analysis of existing data through visualizations and dashboards are also under development.

A part of the PVS Pathway and focused on country-led improvement rather than externally imposed compliance, the PVS Pathway capacity-building platform leads to enhanced capacity, governance and management of Veterinary Services and to greater harmonization across countries: a way forward to foster global commitment to improve animal health and welfare and veterinary public health worldwide.

Category

Camel, Dairy, Frameworks and tools, Healthy diets & Nutrition, One Health, Other breed, Pig, Poultry, and Red meat

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