AMMPS Digital Roadmap

The Moroccan Agency for Medicines and Health Products (AMMPS) is preparing its digital transformation. On Tuesday, October 14, a new 2025-2028 roadmap was announced. It aims to unify its tools, streamline procedures and strengthen medicine traceability. Behind this technological modernization lies a broader issue: making digital technology a lever for transparency, efficiency and pharmaceutical sovereignty, at a time when Morocco is redefining the foundations of its health system. What are the main issues to retain?

Digitalization: A Necessary Turning Point for Pharmaceutical Regulation

Launched by AMMPS, the preparation of an information-systems master plan marks a strategic step in modernizing the pharmaceutical sector. Until now, the Agency operated with scattered digital tools: registration platforms, databases and service portals, without real interoperability or unified data governance. This fragmentation limited the fluidity of exchanges, slowed authorization procedures and weakened the traceability of health products.

The future 2025-2028 roadmap aims to correct these weaknesses through:

• An integrated digital architecture, based on the international TOGAF framework, guaranteeing strong governance and better data security.
• A complete mapping of the existing system, to identify redundancies, technical needs and bottlenecks.
• A clear definition of the technological target, aligned with international standards for pharmaceutical regulation.
• Prioritization of digital projects, according to their impact on performance, feasibility and strategic coherence.

Beyond administrative modernization, the issue is systemic: digitalization will streamline authorization and control pathways, by reducing delays and harmonizing processes between the Agency, the Ministry of Health and manufacturers.

It will also guarantee stronger traceability of medicines, essential for fighting counterfeiting and securing the supply chain.

Finally, by making data accessible and auditable, it will contribute to greater transparency in decision-making, strengthening the trust of citizens and economic actors in medicine regulation.

Pharmaceutical Regulation: An Underestimated Economic Lever

AMMPS digitalization is not only an administrative reform: it is a strategic investment in the economic efficiency of the health system. By streamlining authorization and control pathways, it reduces time to market, optimizes information flows and lowers transaction costs for pharmaceutical companies. For example, the European Union is currently working to reduce the time between medicine authorization and national reimbursement, delays that ranged from 133 days in Germany to more than 899 days in Romania according to a recent study by the Stockholm School of Economics. Drawing on these reforms, Morocco could aim for a significant reduction in such delays, stimulating investment and availability of innovative treatments.

At macroeconomic level, digital medicine regulation contributes to creating a more transparent and efficient environment, capable of limiting losses linked to manual procedures, fraud or counterfeiting. For example, in Tanzania, a study conducted by Cornell University showed that the introduction of an electronic logistics management information system (eLMIS) reduced stockout rates for essential products from 32% to 23%, while stockouts lasting more than 7 days fell from 24% to 15%. This came with an increase in logistics costs, but the cost per value of products adjusted for performance declined, showing a tangible return on investment. For Morocco, such a gain in the pharmaceutical logistics chain would translate not only into savings but also into better health security.

Finally, AMMPS digitalization opens the way to a health-data economy, in which structured information on medicines, flows and uses can feed more precise public policies and innovative public-private partnerships.

Rwanda illustrates this potential: since 2016, its "Babyl" platform has registered more than 2 million users and completed more than 1.3 million consultations, using SMS or USSD for prescriptions and laboratory results, improving access, especially in rural areas. In addition, Rwanda, together with Senegal, recently reached maturity level 3 ("well-functioning regulatory system") in the WHO assessment of medical-product regulatory authorities, which indicates a certain level of maturity in national regulation.

Conclusion:

The digitalization of the Moroccan Agency for Medicines and Health Products is far more than a technical reform: it embodies a strategic turning point for the country's health and economic governance. By relying on data, AMMPS is equipping itself with a tool capable of turning medicine regulation into a lever of efficiency, competitiveness and transparency.

The success of this project will therefore depend less on the tools themselves than on the political vision that accompanies them: that of a strategic state capable of making digital technology an instrument of health sovereignty and economic efficiency. Only under this condition can AMMPS digitalization become a true model of modern and sustainable regulation serving public health.