7 ways Indonesia could boost its healthcare supply chain

INDONESIA

The problems in Indonesia’s healthcare system have become more obvious as facilities struggled to obtain the supplies required amidst the surging pandemic. Th us, the Australia-Indonesia Centre (AIC) has highlighted seven ways for the country to build a “smart” healthcare supply chain.

Th e fi rst is to develop an end-to-end digital platform that provides a central view from supply to procurement. Digital supply chains are currently fragmented, with diff erent departments in the same hospitals using diff erent systems. Further, the applications in use appear to be rudimentary and tend not to be integrated.

All stakeholders are urged to integrate through a single platform that enables transparent operations and centralised or joint procurement. All hospitals can view it in realtime for planning and demand management.

Th e second is to have centralised logistics for all government hospitals. AIC found that hospitals in the country currently conduct their own procurement and manage logistics, which is not the most effi cient alternative.

Th ird: ramp up the fl exibility of the e-catalogue. Th e infl exibility of government procedures and bureaucratic processes has been hampering the eff ectiveness of hospitals’ supply chains, AIC said.

Fourth is to make sure there are eff ective quality and safety monitoring functions. Centrally managed standards continue to be implemented, even when greater fl exibility and autonomy for procurement is facilitated in urgent cases.

Fift h, the system must encourage standardisation and interoperability, which could also facilitate resource-sharing across hospitals. “Standardisation of supply chain practices and interoperability of digital technologies across the healthcare sector would facilitate better integration and learning, with hospitals better able to share knowledge. ,” AIC said.

Sixth, hospitals must ensure transparency and traceability are built into all-digital supply chain solutions to reduce fraud and ensure accountability. “Electronic tagging, robust supplier registration processes, and better traceability of the upstream supply chain via systems integration can eradicate counterfeit medication,” the report stated.

Last is to develop data analytics capability, which is critical for eff ective supply chain management in all hospitals.

“Current analytics seem to be limited to forecasting at best. Real-time solutions, such as real-time streaming analytics, need to be part of the digital solution,” AIC said.

Indonesia must build a “smart” healthcare supply chain