By R. Dana Barlow
October 2024 – The Journal of Healthcare Contracting
With the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) as a developing but useful tool within healthcare supply chain operations, C-suites and departmental executives, leaders and professionals may find it tempting to bring someone on staff or as a third-party purchased service consultant to oversee the technology’s effective application and use.
Or maybe not.
“If anything, the implementation of AI into the existing roles surrounding supply chain would make the need to add such an IT role less necessary,” insisted Brendon Frazer, marketing director, Pandion Optimization Alliance. “It would be able to support the existing roles in the same way an IT position would with minimal additional work with proper utilization and prompting.”
Jason Molding, Chief Supply Chain Officer and vice president, Performance Management, MultiCare Health System, and president, MultiCare’s Myriadd Supply, points to a tighter professional relationship with IT as a more effective option.
“As healthcare supply chain continues to grow more complex and across the care continuum, the need for analytics and insights are critical more than ever to supply chain,” he noted. “If one doesn’t have dedicated [supply chain management] analytics, a strong partnership with our IT colleagues is a must. I would add that that strong partnership is a must if the analytical resources do reside in supply chain. The partnership with IT, executive administration and all the other stakeholders that supply chain would engage in to implement AI outputs need to be engaged at the front end to ensure integrity of the recommendations as well as operationalizing those recommendations. Once those recommendations have a direct and positive impact on cost, quality and outcomes, it makes the conversation and justification of those resources all that much easier and critical.”
Employment candidates certainly will embrace AI management as a relevant and useful skill, according to Gary Fennessy, vice president and Chief Supply Chain Executive, Northwestern Medicine.
“No question the type of individuals that supply chain hires in the future will more and more be centered around digitization and AI. The question is how universities are changing their curriculum in terms of making digitization and AI a core competency,” he indicated.
David Dobrzykowski, Ph.D., professor and director, Walton College Healthcare Initiatives, and senior Ph.D. program coordinator, JB Hunt Transport Department of Supply Chain Management within the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas, advises healthcare providers to plant seeds now to reap AI benefits as soon as possible.
“Providers need to lean into their upstream supply chain partners as AI becomes more integrated into their operations. Distributors, GPOs and 3PLs already offer many AI tools that their clients can use to improve supply chain performance. Tapping these resources, along with university collaborations such as student group projects, can be very useful for providers to dip their toe in the AI ocean, gain familiarity and useful insights as they develop a more comprehensive AI strategy.”
Steve Downey, Chief Supply Chain & Patient Support Services Officer, Cleveland Clinic, and CEO & President, Excelerate, a supply chain-concentrated joint venture between Cleveland Clinic, Vizient and OhioHealth, remains well-versed on AI opportunities for operational success.
Downey cites three areas that matter. The first involves accelerated outcomes. “The ability to help with prompt creation and understanding how to train the models tailored to supply chain needs will accelerate any outcomes,” he noted.
Contracting education plays a role, too. “It’s crucial to ensure that sourcing teams are knowledgeable about AI and understand how to contract for its use effectively.”
Data quality rounds out the trio. “Because data quality is critical to the efficacy of the outcome, there is a need to evaluate the current state of data quality,” he added.
But Downey’s embrace of AI has deepened now that Cleveland Clinic recently appointed Ben Shahshahani as vice president and Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer, an AI expert who hails from SiriusXM as senior vice president of science, machine learning and product analytics and prior to that a collection of big tech name brands such as Verizon, Yahoo, Google, Nuance and IBM. Downey anticipates frequent interaction with Shahshahani once he settles in and sifts through the organization’s AI priorities involving ethics, interoperability, safety and use enterprise-wide.
“The Cleveland Clinic employs various strategies for AI, such as collaborating with external vendors, utilizing our expert clinical teams for suitable applications, broadening access to tools like ChatGPT and CoPilot, integrating machine learning into our analytics, and using AI to enhance operational efficiencies,” he told The Journal of Healthcare Contracting. “Ben will be a crucial resource in leading these initiatives.”