Gartner Gives the Healthcare Supply Chain a Checkup

Gartner has released its second annual review of the Top 25 Healthcare Supply Chains.  Like good health, there exists a litany of best practices that contribute to overall wellness.  Gartner examines what brings the greatest “value” to healthcare supply chains in terms of patient and financial health.  Like patient health, building an efficient supply chain is best achieved with regular maintenance, a team of providers working towards a unified goal, and a heavy dose of preventative medicine.

Building from the first annual publication, Gartner has updated their model for “value” in healthcare.  “The premise remains unchanged,” they note, adding, “Value in healthcare is still high-quality patient care at optimal cost.”  They go on to list the refined core capabilities of the value chain model:

·   Collaboration — Trading partners must enter into sustainable, collaborative relationships with a shared vision and transparent set of mutual goals to create win-win situations.

·   Network visibility — Trading partners must create bidirectional visibility to key information, such as inventory, demand, compliance and outcomes.

·   Dynamic supply — Because high-quality outcomes aren't static targets, all organizations must create agile, value-added supply chain responses tailored to multiple customer and channel segments.

The inclusion of these capabilities to Gartner’s updated model comes as no surprise: collaboration, network visibility, and dynamic supply are all hot issues in the supply chain industry.  Realizing the importance of these components is of great significance, especially to the healthcare field.  As the Gartner report notes, “Excellent supply chain capabilities reduce the time required to sense and respond to patient demand, and then produce a profitable, right-first-time supply response to that demand.”

At Vecco, we couldn’t agree more with Gartner’s message.  Allegro, Vecco’s suite of collaborative supply chain execution solutions, addresses the core capabilities endorsed by Gartner.  Solutions, like Allegro, that provide true business process collaboration will be key as businesses improve their healthcare supply chains.  “The importance and impact of collaboration in our value chain cannot be overstated,” Gartner claims, adding, “Collaboration is the wave, and its tide will flood the value chain with best practices for efficient development and delivery of patient-centric therapies and services.”

Efficient healthcare supply chains provide exceptional patient care, and optimal returns for business.  And that’s an easy pill for everyone to swallow.