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The Emerging Features of Healthcare Supply Chain Resilience: Learning from a Pandemic
Anne W Snowdon1, Michael Saunders2, Alexandra Wright3
1The scientific director and chief executive officer of Supply Chain Advancement Network in Health (SCAN Health), an international knowledge translation platform that engages health system leaders and supply chain experts to advance global capacity to adopt and scale best practices in the healthcare supply chain to offer traceability of products and care processes from bench to bedside to patient outcomes. She is a full professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at the Odette School of Business, University of Windsor in Windsor, ON. She can be reached by e-mail at anne.snowdon@uwindsor.ca.
The COVID-19 pandemic revealed weaknesses in healthcare supply chains. Building resilience requires inventory redundancy, diverse global suppliers, digital transparency, proactive strategies, and equitable distribution to protect lives.
Area of Science:
- Healthcare Management
- Supply Chain Logistics
- Public Health Policy
Background:
- The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted critical vulnerabilities in global healthcare supply chains.
- Disruptions impacted citizens, patients, and healthcare workers across Canada.
- Urgent need to stabilize supply chains for essential medical products became evident.
Purpose of the Study:
- To identify and define the emerging features of healthcare supply chain resilience.
- To analyze the strategies employed by Canadian provincial healthcare supply chain teams during the pandemic.
Main Methods:
- Qualitative analysis of supply chain stabilization efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Identification of key characteristics contributing to supply chain resilience.
Main Results:
- Five emerging features of healthcare supply chain resilience were identified.
- These features include: inventory redundancy, geographic supplier diversification, mature digital infrastructure for transparency, proactive measures, and equitable distribution.
Conclusions:
- Implementing these five features can enhance the resilience of healthcare supply chains.
- Resilience is crucial for ensuring the availability of critical medical products and protecting public health during crises.
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