Medical Supply Chain Management

What is SCM? Supply chain management (SCM) deals with the overall management of the flow of goods, products, and services

The global medical supply industry plays a vital role in delivering critical products to hospitals, clinics, and healthcare networks. Over

The fragile state of the medical supply chain was clearly exposed during the covid-19 pandemic. Last year, the US’s emergency inventory of 12

Will the upside-down world of the medical supply chain correct itself in a post-COVID era? The fragile state of the

Back orders and allocations are inevitable in any industry, and especially susceptible in the medical industry. With such a high demand for supplies, manufacturers either do not make a sufficient amount of products to match the rising number of sales or distributors warehouses underpredict how much stock would be needed.

Sometimes, unforeseen natural disasters occur, leaving manufacturers and distributors without the opportunity to fulfill any orders. In 2018, there was an IV bag shortage due to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico; the Hurricane “amplified the IV bag shortage, in particular, sodium chloride 0.9% injection bags, which are ubiquitous in medical facilities and hospitals”.

As a result, clients (in our case, physician offices, surgery centers, medical spas, biological laboratories) were left at large, scrambling to find any distributor with remaining stock to avoid disruptions in procedures.