Pharmaceutical supply chain risks: a systematic review

Supply of medicine as a strategic product in any health system is a top priority. Pharmaceutical companies, a major player of the drug supply chain, are subject to many risks. These risks disrupt the supply of medicine in many ways such as their quantity and quality and their delivery to the right place and customers and at the right time. Therefore, risk identification in the supply process of pharmaceutical companies and mitigate them is highly recommended. In this study, it is attempted to investigate pharmaceutical supply chain risks with perspective of manufacturing companies. Scopus, PubMed, Web of Science bibliographic databases and Google scholar scientific search engines were searched for pharmaceutical supply chain risk management studies with 6 different groups of keywords. Nine articles were included in the systematic review and totally 50 main risks based on study outcome of interest extracted which classified in 7 categories. Most of reported risks were related to supply and supplier issues.