Today’s pressure on healthcare officials is constantly growing, with a rising need for more supplies but with a significantly lower budget. The increasing pressure for healthcare organisations to cut budgets is beginning to put patient care at risk, especially where medical equipment and supplies are concerned. As a result, the need for more efficient supply chain processes is quickly rising too. While cheap courier delivery can relieve the pressure temporarily in emergency situations, building up a better supply chain for consistent relief is vital and with today’s advancements in delivery technology, this could become a reality in the near future. We’re exploring these advancements below.
Better Supply Management
Supply Chain Management Software (SCMS) could provide healthcare institutions with a much better idea of what supplies they need before they can run out. While these processes are already in place to an extent, by introducing automation, the chance of human error is eliminated completely. These systems will track stock levels and supply use, giving manufacturers and healthcare institutions alike a better insight into the status of their inventory at any one time.
Through automated ordering or, alternatively, better control over stocks, healthcare officials can control their profits and reduce the waste of time-sensitive or unnecessary supplies. This can ultimately help improve the entire supply chain process, while also promoting patient satisfaction and could potentially make faster treatments a reality.
Visibility Across Industries
Through better supply chain management, visibility could open up not only within the healthcare industry but across multiple industries associated with it. By tracking supply use down to which individual patient the supplies are going to, the information available could not only assist healthcare professionals in their treatments and the ordering of supplies, but it could provide much-needed information to insurance companies, care providers and any other institutions in need of healthcare information. This visibility could make processes much more efficient and potentially much faster.
Drones
Drones have been a hot topic across countless industries in the past few years, from entertainment to the military. Within healthcare, however, drones have the potential to revolutionise the way we move supplies. While they aren’t expected to be used for any day-to-day deliveries, the industry has already seen the use of drones in natural disasters to move much-needed medical supplies to otherwise hard-to-reach places.
Industry-level drones could potentially move supplies across much longer distances in the future in a fraction of the time it may have taken to deliver them by road and as we all know, a reduction in time taken could be a matter of life or death.
Technology has revolutionised the delivery industry as of late and our healthcare systems could benefit from these greatly in the near future. From automated management systems that could reduce supply wastage, to a much more transparent supply chain to benefit all parties involved, the opportunities to not only promote efficiency but to reduce costs while doing so is huge. Whether these technologies will become commonplace or how they could improve in the future is a matter of patience, so watch this space.
