LocationsFrom eVIN to LaoWIN—and a new digital supply chain journey in Zambia
Smart Supply Chains: How South-South Cooperation is Transforming Health Systems
September 10, 2026
Caption: UNDP India team facilitating the implementation of LaoWIN pilot
On a busy morning at Mahosot Hospital in Lao PDR, Lamay, a health worker, begins her day by stocking essential medicines, logging incoming supplies and charting requirements for the coming weeks. It is one of her key responsibilities, requiring careful coordination because a miscalculation can mean having too much of one commodity while running out of another.
Keeping track of supplies is a constant task. Health workers need accurate, up-to-date information on what is available, what has been used and what needs to be replenished. When these processes rely heavily on manual records, maintaining a clear picture of inventory can take time, making it harder to anticipate shortages, prevent excess stock and ensure supplies are available when they are needed.
For Lamay and health workers like her, this is more than an administrative challenge. Every stock record represents a child or family waiting to receive protection through vaccination. Ensuring that vaccines are available, potent and accessible when they are needed depends on a supply chain that can respond quickly to changing requirements.
In Lao PDR, that supply chain is becoming increasingly digital.
Drawing on India's experience with the Electronic Vaccine Intelligence Network (eVIN), the Government of Lao PDR, with support from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), has adapted the approach into the Lao Warehouse Intelligence Network (LaoWIN), a digital system designed to strengthen vaccine supply chain management through real-time visibility of vaccine stocks and logistics.
From eVIN to LaoWIN
India's experience in developing and scaling digital public health solutions has offered valuable lessons to countries across the Global South. Over the past decade, India has strengthened its vaccine supply chain, supported the world's largest COVID-19 vaccination programme and advanced the digitization of its routine immunization system.
Under the UN India SDG Country Fund, UNDP India has supported India's Ministry of External Affairs and Ministry of Health and Family Welfare in sharing these experiences and helping other countries adapt solutions such as eVIN to their own needs and contexts. For Lao PDR, this exchange moved from learning to implementation. UNDP India partnered with the Ministry of Health of Lao PDR to adapt eVIN into LaoWIN, customizing the platform to meet the country's operational requirements rather than adopting an external system unchanged.
Delegations from Lao PDR and Zambia visited Delhi to see India's digital health solutions in action and learn from their implementation at scale. These exchanges provided an opportunity to understand the technology as well as the systems and processes that support digitalization.
From adaptation to implementation
UNDP India team facilitating the implementation of LaoWIN pilot
The LaoWIN pilot was launched across 11 health facilities in Sissattanak and Phonehong districts. Approximately 50 master trainers, programme managers and cold chain handlers were trained between 6 and 8 April 2026 to support implementation.
A major milestone followed on 8 April 2026, when LaoWIN went live across all pilot facilities. Health workers began recording vaccine supply chain transactions through the digital platform from day one.
In the nearly five months since the pilot began, LaoWIN has recorded 1,677 supply chain transactions, with 70 percent taking place through the mobile application at the point of care. The pilot has also recorded a 60 percent reduction in stock-outs and a 66 percent decline in excess stock, helping optimize vaccine availability for beneficiaries.
For the Ministry of Health, the value of LaoWIN extends beyond replacing paper records with a digital platform. It offers a way to strengthen visibility of vaccine stocks, improve decision-making and build a more responsive supply chain.
Keeping vaccines safe, not just available
Digital visibility of vaccine stocks is only one part of an effective immunization supply chain. Vaccines save lives only when they remain potent and effective. Maintaining this potency requires an uninterrupted cold chain, with vaccines stored and transported within recommended temperature ranges.
To strengthen this critical aspect of vaccine management, temperature loggers have also been introduced across the pilot sites. These devices continuously monitor storage temperatures, providing real-time insights into cold chain performance and helping programme managers identify and address temperature excursions before vaccine quality is compromised.
Together, LaoWIN and temperature-monitoring technologies are helping create a more resilient vaccine supply chain, combining digital visibility, accountability and quality assurance.
Building government ownership
Successful digital transformation depends on more than technology. Training frontline workers, adapting systems to local workflows and ensuring government ownership are central to making innovation sustainable.
As Viengxay Viravong, Deputy Director General, Department of Planning and Finance, Ministry of Health, Lao PDR, noted: “With the adaptation of eVIN as LaoWIN, we are confident that such a digital platform can work effectively, especially in resource-constrained settings. It can also pave the way for an ecosystem that supports the development of more connected systems.”
With government ownership at the core, Lao PDR is now looking towards institutionalizing and scaling up LaoWIN nationwide.
The next chapter: Zambia
Faith, a health worker navigates a demo version of the proposed healthcare supply chain management system in Zambia
The same exchange of experience is now taking shape in Zambia, although at an earlier stage.
Zambia already uses warehouse management systems and logistics platforms. Yet real-time visibility of stock availability at the last mile remains limited. At health facilities, workers continue to record daily stock transactions manually using stock cards and registers.
Just like Lamay, Faith Fumpa, a pharmacist at Chongwe District Hospital, spends much of her day keeping track of essential medicines for her community. Her work goes beyond dispensing medicines. She tracks hundreds of health commodities moving in and out of the facility, with each medicine requiring a separate stock card. Every receipt, issue, adjustment and balance has to be entered manually.
Before she can begin forecasting future needs or addressing stock gaps, hours can be spent reconciling records, updating registers and making sure that paperwork matches what is actually on the shelves.
During a recent mission to Zambia, a team from UNDP India met healthcare workers, assessed existing systems used in public healthcare and introduced a model supply chain solution adapted from eVIN to frontline health workers.
For Faith, the potential was immediately practical. “This is so easy to operate, saves a lot of time. A system like this can free up time to assist the patients who come to the clinic,” she said as she explored the model platform.
What previously required multiple stock cards, registers and manual calculations could now be completed within minutes. Inventory levels could be viewed in real time, potential shortages identified before they became stock-outs and consumption trends analysed more easily.
The proposed eVIN-based digital ecosystem aims to bridge the gap between existing procurement, warehouse and logistics systems and the last mile, creating greater end-to-end visibility of essential medicines, from national warehouses to the health facilities where patients need them.
Learning across the Global South
For Andrew Kashoka, Director of Information Technology at Zambia's Ministry of Health, India's experience offers an important lesson.
“There are some bottlenecks that we observe in our programmes. Looking at the scale at which eVIN has been deployed already in India, we think that if it can be done in India, it can be done in Zambia as well. When we adapt it to our needs, I think it will work and be sustainable in the long run as well.”
A Zambian health worker logs stocks of essential health commodities into the demo version of the proposed healthcare supply chain management solution
The journeys of Lao PDR and Zambia are at different stages, but both show how experience can travel across contexts when solutions are adapted to local realities. India's experience has already informed digital health logistics in other countries. In Indonesia, eVIN provided the foundation for SMILE, a digital health logistics platform that has since been fully institutionalized by the Ministry of Health and evolved into a nationwide backbone for health logistics. Similar digital health systems drawing on India's experience have also been supported in countries including Malawi, Sudan and Afghanistan.
From technology transfer to shared experience
The LaoWIN experience shows what can happen when a proven digital approach is combined with local adaptation, frontline capacity and government ownership. Zambia represents the next stage of that journey, as stakeholders explore how the same principles can be applied to strengthen the management of essential medicines.
For health workers, the value is ultimately practical: less time spent on manual processes, better visibility of supplies and stronger capacity to anticipate and respond to gaps. For health systems, it is an opportunity to turn lessons from one context into solutions that can work in another.
That is the promise of South-South Cooperation: not simply sharing a technology, but sharing experience, adapting it locally and building the capacity and ownership needed to make it work.
From Mahosot Hospital in Lao PDR to Chongwe District Hospital in Zambia, the journey is about connecting the last mile to smarter, more responsive health systems, so that the right vaccines and medicines can reach the people who need them, when they need them.
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