October 2021 – The Journal of Healthcare Contracting
Vizient, Inc. (Irving, TX) announced the launch of its set of solutions to improve healthcare supply chain resiliency through greater transparency and predictability across trading partners.
The GPO says that these solutions will offer health systems greater visibility into supplier manufacturing and distribution sites, tracking of impactful events and risk management services for a provider’s critical supply list.
“The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated a historical weakness in the U.S. health care supply chain – a lack of transparency and predictability between suppliers and providers. The Vizient resilience solution set has been developed to address these issues head on so trading partners across the supply chain are sharing information at a deeper level, and in real time, which will elevate overall performance and flexibility,” said David Gillan, senior vice president, Emerging Solutions and Supplier Engagement for Vizient.
Also included is a technology-enabled platform for Vizient members and suppliers for demand forecasting, real-time inventory availability and disruption alerts for end-to-end logistics management.
The Vizient resilience solution set has three foundational elements:
- Supplier pedigree data
- Critical supplies management service
- Technology to support the resilience network platform
Supplier pedigree data involves the adoption and utilization of supplier data standards across the provider and supplier community, including securely collecting and maintaining information on the physical location of major manufacturing, distribution or critical raw material sites.
Critical supplies management services provide disruptive event tracking and risk management of a provider’s critical supply list. Advisors monitor and share actionable information to supply chain managers that enable them to efficiently manage their inventory of critical supplies and quickly pivot to alternative suppliers and conservation strategies as needed.
Vizient is establishing a resilience network platform through a strategic relationship with E2open (Austin, Texas), a network-based provider of cloud-based, mission-critical, end-to-end supply chain management software, to facilitate the rapid development of a multi-party collaboration platform. Vizient says that the platform will enable timely insights into forecast, inventory availability, transportation, and consumption of goods with proactive management alerts for disruptions and imbalances to improve availability of healthcare products.
Once launched, the GPO says the new technology will give members and suppliers participating in the resilience network platform secure, permission-based access for:
- Visibility into the geographical location of major manufacturing and distribution
- Real-time logistics visibility of shipments from the supplier to
the health system - Awareness of perpetual inventory status by location across suppliers, distributors and providers
- Forecast and consumption insights to predict usage and reduce impact of demand surges
The resilience network platform is expected to fully launch in early 2022.