Digital healthcare systems must include integrated inventory and supply chain management to deliver operational efficiency to hospitals

Hospitals frequently face lower margins as a result of poor medical and consumable supply management and excessive inventory costs. A hospital usually spends 30% of its budget on supplies, medications, commodities, injectables, prostheses, films, and reagents. This is mostly due to a mismatch in supply and demand caused by the hospital-based order system, inventory management system, and supply chain network acting as separate systems. This might potentially be deadly to the patients’ quality of care. Supply chain management will be no exception, as AI is quietly but surely altering it. The procedure takes a long time, which leaves many supply chain managers perplexed and unsure about whether or not to adopt AI technology.

With no EMR/EHR going into hospitals, many healthcare facilities manually enter inventory data and generate purchase orders. Three separate goods are not integrated into the remaining hospitals where technology is available, resulting in a supply and demand mismatch. Hospitals have significant cash flow challenges as a result of this issue, and their inventory represents the great bulk of their cash each month. Operating a hospital without evidence-based clinical inventories and supply chain networks might feel like putting out fires every day and overpaying suppliers. It’s also painful to write this off as a failure due to expiring items.

To accomplish real supply chain modernisation, the following components are necessary:

Inventory Management

When a hospital has a need, a ‘challan’ is issued depending on internal parameters such as utilization and stock levels. Doctors frequently have little or limited knowledge of supply availability. They may prescribe medications that aren’t in stock, causing diagnosis and treatment to be delayed. As a result, there are instances where employees stockpile medication and subsequently purchase it at a higher price elsewhere, resulting in stock variation. As a result, internal management is a serious problem that requires immediate attention by using a computerised stock management system.

AI/ML Forecast Analysis for Demand and Supply Chain Management

To decrease supply carrying costs, which are quite expensive, especially in the case of vital supply, purchases must be conducted according to demand. Incompetence in analysing the many quotations supplied by multiple suppliers, lead time to purchase any drug, and acquiring an expensive inventory are the key obstacles experienced throughout the purchasing process. Manual comparisons can be inefficient and time-consuming. Buying slow-moving stock instead of fast-moving stock might also result in a loss. Seasonal variations in the demand and supply of certain drugs are possible. As a result, an AI/ML-based platform that can forecast the requirement for pharmaceuticals based on seasonal or slow-moving inventories is required.

Good Received (GRN) Consignment Workflow Management

This is a document of products received from the provider, and it is frequently displayed as verification that an order item was received. The number of products supplied and a lot of factors delivered are compared using this data. This is frequently done manually, and there is room for error. Instead, an interactive technology system for such creation, verification, and return process might be implemented, complete with automatic management for returning expired medications and updating the free item inventory. The GRN should be accessible at all stages from the challan till it is signed. During this journey, there are some inconsistencies. As a result, a platform that can detect and track updates in real-time time is required.

Information System for Supply Accounting

The GST applies to medicines and consumables. GST billing, payments, and claiming input tax credit may all be automated at each point of purchase, making tax payments and credit claims easy.

Management of Supplier Contract Rates

An automated system for simple tracking of multiple vendors’ prices should be in place to eliminate any preferred item rates that might lead to hoarding. This procedure must be system-driven and devoid of manual dependencies.

Because technology has the potential to radically alter the in and outs of hospitals, now is the time to seize every chance to integrate cutting-edge technology to enhance internal procedures and increase operational efficiency for better patient care. An integrated inventory system is one of them, and it will ensure that supply chain and logistical inefficiencies are addressed. It might also imply that the expense of transporting and maintaining inventory would be greatly reduced, as well as the risk of discarding valuable medications and vaccines.