Framework for tracking and enhancing sustainability and diversity in healthcare procurement in light of COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the fragility of our healthcare supply chains and exposed our over-reliance on certain countries or regions to ensure supply chain security and sustainability. This has led to massive shortages of goods and services across our healthcare system and has hampered our ability to deliver care when and where it is most needed. The Global-Value-Chain (GVC) framework which has guided the supply chain design in the last two decades has unlocked tremendous trade and benefits to our healthcare ecosystem and society. However, under the lens of a global demand shock and supply shortages, it has shown the weaknesses of just-in-time (JIT) business model that prioritises low-cost foreign-made products, with a focus on reduced inventories to minimise operating costs, while ignoring sustainability and environmental impact.

In the UK, the NHS's existing solutions for supplier selection use GVC framework and subjective assessments of a narrow range of supplier variables and manual analysis of non-real-time internal supplier data to guide selection decisions. To better prepare the NHS for the emerging COVID-19 wave and help prepare the system for post-COVID recovery, Vamstar will leverage data-science and deep learning to create a multivariate diversity-scoring-and-assessment framework to incorporate supplier diversity, supply chain security, and environmental sustainability criteria in the supplier selection mix. This will ensure that the NHS has a capacity to manage the supply risks during COVID-19 using a more integrated framework while creating a sustainable pathway for post-COVID recovery. Moreover, by incorporating environmental sustainability related variables, such as emissions reductions, the UK government and the NHS will be able to provide the first working industrial framework to meet the net-zero emissions target while ensuring supply chain security, sustainability, diversity, and stability.