Understanding The Trends Affecting Medical Supply Chain

A streamlined supply chain is essential for hospitals to attain a high degree of operational efficiency. Although, Indian healthcare centres are still operating on manual supply chain procedures, there are certain trends which are starting to appear in the medical supplies industry as technology is gradually getting integrated into the system.An insight by Vivek Tiwari, Founder & CEO, Medikabazaar.com

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GLOBALLY THERE is a pressing need in the healthcare industry to automate inventory systems and analytics to reduce revenue leakages. Excess or shortage of stock, expiry loss, low inventory turnover, high inventory carrying cost affect the cost of healthcare delivery. When it comes to cost reduction and improve efficiency, three words that strike are 'supply chain management.' Businesses typically focus on improving the bottom line by streamlining the supply chain. However, bringing in operational efficiency is relatively new in the healthcare industry.

Medical supply chain management is one of the most pivotal functions of medical establishments. The function needs to ensure that the patients are treated on time as planned with the availability of required and adequate medical supplies. The supply chain process starts with hospitals contacting vendors to inquire about medical supplies to receiving the requirements at the facility. Hospitals need to ensure that every step of the process is streamlined and transparent so that they don’t end up spending disproportionate finances, purchase the wrong products and jeopardise patient care.

In India, procurement of medical supply has been more or less handled manually. Hospitals connect with multiple dealers, distributors or manufacturers for their supplies which not only take a significant amount of time but at times can lead to wrong purchases, excesses, shortages of supplies.