An investigation of healthcare supply chain management and patient responsiveness

Understanding public service supply chain management: a systematic literature review

The complexity of delivering public services under dynamically changing operating conditions causes uncertainty in those processes. Economic and social crises, pandemics, natural and technological threats and local armed conflicts add more layers of complexity and force governments to seek ways to ensure the continuous supply of these services. Therefore, researchers indicate that a supply chain management approach could increase the efficiency and quality of public service implementation processes. However, the scattered research that exists on this topic occurs in limited areas of public governance. Therefore, this paper aims to understand the importance of supply chain management in public service delivery processes, develop the public service supply chain model, analyse the evolution of the research and identify research streams in this exploratory area. A systematic literature review based on the PRISMA methodology serves to achieve this purpose. The paper defines public service supply chain management as a synchronised process of co-creating value in public networks with its basis in relationship management, in which each actor can be both a supplier and an end-user. This paper also presents a bibliographic visualisation of research issues in public service supply chain management (PSSCM) and identifies eight major research streams in this area.

Managing healthcare supply chain through artificial intelligence (AI): A study of critical success factors

Healthcare is one of the most critical sectors due to its importance in handling public health. With the outbreak of various diseases, more recently during Covid-19, this sector has gained further attention. The pandemic has exposed vulnerabilities in the healthcare supply chain (HSC). Recent advancements like the adoption of various advanced technologies viz. AI and Industry 4.0 in the healthcare supply chain are turning out to be game-changers. This study focuses on identifying critical success factors (CSFs) for AI adoption in HSC in the emerging economy context. Rough SWARA is used for ranking CSFs of AI adoption in HSC. Results indicate that technological (TEC) factors are the most influential factor that impacts the adoption of AI in HSC in the context of emerging economies, followed by institutional or environmental (INT), human (HUM), and organizational (ORG) dimensions.

Enablers of resilience in the healthcare supply chain: A case study of U.S healthcare industry during COVID-19 pandemic

Healthcare is considered one basic necessity to sustaining life; thereby, assessing the character of a healthy and resilient supply chain can help a nation develop ideas to combat the healthcare crisis. COVID-19 has led to a long-term strain on the healthcare supply chain (HCSC) and has resulted in a lack of basic healthcare necessities. It has become apparent that supply chain disruptions and increased usage has led to a lack of medical supplies needed to provide the proper care to patients. Multicriteria decision-making (MCDM) will help to indicate what characteristics contribute to resilient healthcare supply chains. To assess the characteristic of a resilient supply chain, significant healthcare supply chains will help indicate significant characteristics. A case study on the medical supplies’ supply chains is presented. A rank reversal proximity index MCDM method ranks criteria to assist with decision making. The proximity index will reduce the chances of the rank reversal phenomenon that results in incorrect rankings from occurring. Results show that redundancy, collaboration, and robustness are key indicators of a resilient supply chain while, supply chain design, communication capabilities, and supply chain risk management become comparatively less important during the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, an unsupervised machine learning tecnique named "cluster analysis" is conducted to group the resilience indicators of the respective supply chain. Through this study, the best way to combat disruptions in the healthcare supply chain due to large-scale pandemics is to share information quickly, reduce reliance on the design of the supply chain, and track the usage of necessary medical supplies. Alternatively, we validated our study by comparing a Preference Selection Index (PSI) to the proposed method.

Healthcare Supply Chain Reliability: The Case of Medical Air Transport

The principal task of national healthcare systems is to provide health services that are safe, accessible, high-quality and people-oriented. To ensure the continuity of healthcare, support activities related to patient transfer and logistics are necessary. Effective implementation of transport processes is a factor affecting the possibility of medical intervention, in terms of both planned and life-saving care. The reliability of the healthcare supply chain is a key factor in patient health. In our research, we have used the method of a single case study of a public regional hospital in Poland providing comprehensive medical services. The aim of the research is to identify the factors that affect the reliability of the healthcare supply chain in relation to the interhospital air transport of patients. Our qualitative research using process mapping reveals what factors affect the reliability of interhospital medical air transport. The analysis of 100 interhospital medical air transport cases has allowed us to create a general procedure related to the movement of patients between the facilities of the healthcare system in Poland. Our research shows that the key factor of reliability is the coherent and integrated cooperation of institutions involved in transport processes.

Identification and causal assessment of supply chain flexibility

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to map the causal relations among various supply chain flexibility (SCF) dimensions having significant impact on the Indian personal hygiene industry.

Design/methodology/approach

The author(s) have gone through extensive literature review and extracted 22 SCF dimensions. After conducting field visits and expert interaction in the firm related to case industry, 11 major SCF dimensions that seem to have a significant amount of influence on supply chain performance of the firms were retained for further consideration. The author(s) have used decision making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) to establish initial causality and structural equation model (SEM) to investigate the contribution of different flexibility dimensions on overall SCF.

Findings

After DEMATEL analysis, three major SCF dimensions were considered for SEM modeling. The result shows that product flexibility and physical distribution flexibility have favorable influence on the SCF, while the demand management flexibility adversely impacts overall SCF.

Practical implications

The approach adopted in the study can help firms to determine and exercise the flexibility dimensions of a particular supply chain. The DEMATEL and SEM offer a facilitation to explain the causal relationship between the different dimensions to take long-term decisions and address the uncertainty in the demand and supply side.

Originality/value

This paper has made an attempt to evaluate the supply chain flexibilities, prioritize them and evaluate the relationship amongst these flexibilities and the degree to which they affect or are affected by one another in the Indian personal hygiene industry.