In a post-pandemic society where there’s an increased focus on physical and mental health, healthcare organisations around the world have found themselves under the spotlight. Whether this relates to the integration of tech and automation, clinical effectiveness, or patient care depends on the organisations themselves.
Althea Australia is a part of the Althea Group, a global organisation working across 16 countries. The Group operates as an outsource technological partner that provides managed services and multivendor maintenance across an entire spectrum of medical equipment – both in public and private portfolios.
But over at Althea Australia, based in Melbourne, things are slightly different.
“We provide consultancy and procurement services across a full range of diagnostic imaging equipment, including CT, X-ray, and MRI, up to 13 modalities,” says Monique Gaspar.
“The procurement function really is the integral component of our business operations, and we’re really committed to delivering best outcomes and best benefits for our customers.”
Head of Business Operations and Procurement at Althea Australia, Gaspar runs its day-to-day operations and manages customer supply relationships. She is, however, a radiographer by trade.
With aspirations to be the preferred group procurement organisation for radiology across ANZ, Althea Australia’s Phil Barber & Monique Gaspar explain why
“I have 20 years of clinical experience in radiology in all different modalities,” says Gaspar. “I'm a subject-matter expert, responsible for the maintenance of our ISO 9001 accredited governance and framework. I'm also a procurement specialist.”
At Althea Australia, the team is small with multiple portfolios. Within this team, Phil Barber functions as the Senior Product Procurement Specialist and Business Development Manager.
“We aid in helping our partners to adhere to our rigid framework, our model, and our processes in procuring equipment,” says Barber. “I'm also responsible for the growth of the business, seeking out external opportunities with other groups, such as major corporations or private hospitals, and growing our business.”
Over his 30+ year career in the industry, Barber has become an experienced subject-matter expert across all facets of diagnostic radiology, led into the healthcare
PHILIP BARBER SENIOR RADIOLOGY PRODUCT/PROCUREMENT ALTHEA AUSTRALIAindustry because of a desire to utilise all learnedskills from the full span of his career.
“This for me, was a challenging new role. It gave me a new burst of life, and it was the first time I was on the customer or purchasing side, not with equipment sales and marketing,” says Barber.
In contrast, Gaspar has spent 20 years in a variety of hospital and private healthcare settings, having also done some teaching within this remit.
SPECIALIST,
“Because of our transparency, it opens the gate and gives us very open communication between the suppliers, which is a good strength”
LOCATION: AUSTRALIA
Philip Barber has worked Althea Australia since August 2021 as a Senior Product/ Procurement Specialist. Prior to Althea, he had a 30+ year successful career at GE Healthcare, progressing from GE Australia’s 1st In-house CT Applications Specialist, through various Sales/Marketing positions within their CT/MR Modalities; Thailand Country Manager and AsiaPacific CT Product Marketing Manager, based in Bangkok, Thailand. His last role at GE was within their ANZ Service Business, prior to joining Althea.
Phil is a Medical X-Ray Technologist by training from the University of South Australia and graduated from at Flinders Medical Centre in Adelaide. Phil’s strengths are his passion, knowledge, and experience, coupled with roles that have involved intense customer interaction. He has strong customer focus and balances the technical aspects/knowledge with clinical outcomes.
Phil is an Australian Citizen and resides in Gold Coast, Queensland. He lives with his Asperger’s son, aged 22 years.
LOCATION: AUSTRALIA
Monique Gaspar came to Althea Australia in 2020 as a Radiology Product Specialist and has since risen to become Head of Procurement and Business Operations, overseeing every aspect of Althea’s business.
Monique commenced her career as a graduate radiographer in Melbourne and quickly entered a managerial role before being recruited to educate radiographers at the prestigious Monash and RMIT Universities in Melbourne. After a distinguished career in academia, she completed her MBA and later began working for Althea.
Monique is valued by Althea’s clients for her detailed understanding of their operational and capital needs, and how those needs are best answered by the various equipment vendors operating within radiology. She is appreciated by her colleagues for her enthusiasm, warmth and leadership.
Monique lives in Melbourne with her husband Andrew and their 3 children.
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Healthcare is the Carestream Authorised Distributor for Sales and Service in Australia, New Zealand and Philippines“With Althea, I was looking for a new challenge. I'd previously worked in a different role in admin and HR, with a bit of procurement involved. So when this job came up, I saw that it was a role where I could combine my healthcare and radiology background with my business experience,” she says.
Procuring high-value medical equipment
Althea Australia aspires to be the preferred group procurement organisation for radiology and healthcare providers across ANZ – Australia and New Zealand.
“We really want to be a centre of excellence for procurement,” says Gaspar. “We provide professional and strategic targeted procurement to Radiology – using our best practices – and to the market. This results in significant savings and operational
benefits to our healthcare providers. We provide fresh new ideas to the marketplace that drive competitive tension, which is best for everyone.”
Althea Australia is the only company doing this in the ANZ market, specifically in Radiology, which Barber sees as a huge competitive advantage.
“Our model has helped us drive capital expenditure down, so it benefits our clients,” Barber says.
Traditionally in the ANZ market, medical equipment has been purchased based on long-standing, preferred supplier relationships.
“New suppliers find it difficult to penetrate, even if they have superior specifications or more cost-effective equipment,” says Barber. “Equipment procurement times were lengthy and often drawn out, with repeated
“We really want to be a centre of excellence for procurement”
back-and-forth negotiations, which wastes time and money. Corporatisation of the private market is still ongoing and growing, and more and more smaller groups are consolidating.”
Corporate organisations desire structured and streamlined procurement processes rather than just operating as individuals.
Private companies and public sector organisations that purchase medical equipment individually are often limited by the scale of their organisation.
Althea Australia utilises strategic procurement processes, aligned with the organisation business objectives. The company is actively marketing to healthcare providers that will drive the benefits of scale.
“Essentially,” says Gaspar, ”in our core team of 4 personnel – of which 3 are subject-matter experts – we have the experience and technical skills across all modalities within diagnostic imaging, remaining neutral and unbiased with respect to all the different vendors.
“With regards to our expertise in specification and functionality, part of our process is designed to save the customer time and money because we procure fit-for-purpose equipment and match their clinical requirements of the sites, to their budgets. We use our expertise and experience to bring down their capital expenditure on equipment procurement and reduce the total cost of ownership over the life of the system, including servicing.”
“Our model is ideal for corporates as well as individual purchasers,” says Barber, “where the same business objectives are to minimise unnecessary overspending to improve their balance sheets, whereas previously, individuals were purchasing
based on brand names and/or repeat replacements. Whilst we understand brand loyalty and other factors exist in choosing equipment, we offer alternative options to the customers with equipment that fits their clinical needs, but not necessarily just re-ordering the brand they've bought for years.
“We're very transparent in the process. We've opened the game up to all suppliers that have equipment that match the specifications and clinical needs of that site. I think that's a good thing for the industry.”
PHILIP BARBER SENIOR RADIOLOGY PRODUCT/PROCUREMENT SPECIALIST, ALTHEA AUSTRALIASupporting suppliers and upholding partnerships
How healthcare businesses have managed their supply chains and partnerships has evolved over the past two years. At Althea Australia, Barber believes that the key to their success has been their relationship with suppliers.
“We need to be able to best-fit their products to our clinical needs and our end users,” he says. “We rely on those supplier relationships to educate us and update our knowledge-data continuously.”
This is not just a once-a-year type of activity; Althea Australia’s suppliers are constantly updating with new products, innovations and technologies. Radiology
“Equipment procurement times were lengthy and often drawn out, with repeated back-and-forth negotiations, which was a waste of time and money”
equipment improvements and innovations are constantly changing healthcare.
“Because of our transparency, it opens the gate, which gives us very open communication between our suppliers – it’s a core strength,” says Barber.
The company has worked with medical equipment supplier Quantum Healthcare who distributes and services equipment from Carestream Health Inc, and other OEM’s.
“We've renewed – and actually strengthened – the relationship between Quantum Healthcare and our clients with recent successes in their x-ray products, and the potential with expanding their portfolio with ultrasound systems,” continues Barber. “We did this by providing constructive
feedback to Quantum on what they did well and what could be improved with their tender offerings via our debrief sessions. They acted on our feedback, which enabled Quantum to attain success within our procurement tender process. They listened to what we've had to tell them as a customer, we've informed them how we believe they can become successful, and they've acted on that. A win-win for both parties.”
Another customer supplier who has also enjoyed recent successes with their tender offerings to Althea Australia has been Fujifilm Asia Pacific, with recent wins for their x-ray, OPG and mobile x-ray products.
“We’ve had successful installations and positive feedback from our end-users
regarding the Fujifilm products, which are well supported by their service teams,” says Barber. “Globally, they recently released new ultrasound products that are now being introduced locally, so we're trying to open doors to our customer-base for them to demonstrate their products. We are also excited with their soon-to-be-released CT Scanner systems, which can further expand their coverage and footprint for Fujifilm. We offer consultancy and advice to them on their product ranges, suitability and positioning across the ANZ market whilst serving our customers’ needs.”
But what is it that makes such partnerships work? What does a partnership have to have to be successful?
“I think it's like any good relationship,” says Barber. “Understanding and trusting our framework and processes. They've got to understand how we work and how they work with us – and to do that, good communication is required between all parties.
“100% what Phil said,” concurs Gaspar. “You definitely have to be open and transparent; it really is key because then there's no misunderstanding of what's happening.”
In the past, it has taken some suppliers a long time to understand Althea Australia’s processes, with some even slipping back into previous modes of procurement.
“But once we installed our framework and explained how we work, they quickly adapted to become competitive,” says Barber.
That then allowed Althea Australia to fulfil product features while driving cost advantages for clients at the same time.
