Abstract:

The aim of the article is to study theoretical, methodological, and doctrinal approaches to public procurement of medicines and on this basis to determine ways to improve domestic legislation in this sphere. The subject of the study is public procurement of medicines. Methodology. The study is based on general scientific and special-scientific methods and techniques of scientific knowledge. The historical and legal method enabled to determine the preconditions for public procurement of medicines as a fundamental element of state financial guarantees for the pharmaceutical sphere in Ukraine and in the world, as well as the development of scientific and theoretical views on the nature, problems, and methods of public procurement of medications. The comparative legal method enabled to compare doctrinal approaches to public procurement of medicinal products. The systemstructural method contributed to the consideration of public procurement of medications as a fundamental institutional and functional element of state financial guarantees for the pharmaceutical sector. The methods of grouping and classifying were the basis for the author’s approach to public procurement of medicines for the most important and practically significant criteria. The technical legal method enabled to interrogate the state of affairs in the statutory and legal regulation of the national system of public procurement of medications, to identify its disadvantages, gaps, contradictions and miscalculations, as well as to develop recommendations aimed at their elimination. The results of the study revealed that public procurement of medicines should be considered as an activity of a public administration or specialized agencies authorized by it, aimed at purchasing medicinal products by the procurer funded from taxpayer’s money and preserving the health of citizens via a transparent control by the state (via the Prozoro system). Practical implications. In the study: first, the key aspects of the genesis of public procurement of medicines are outlined; second, scientific approaches to their characteristics, available in the special literature, are analysed and compared; third, the author’s original perspective concerning legislative regulation and consolidation in the current legal regulations is substantiated. Relevance/originality. The original author’s approach to the doctrinal principles of public procurement of medications is the basis for developing the most promising areas of improvement of domestic legislation in this sphere.

Keywords: