Healthcare supply chain operations improvement in Thailand

• Main Author: Sophon Muangchoo
• Other Authors: Duangpun Singkarin
• Language: English
• Published: Mahidol University. Mahidol University Library and Knowledge Center 2023
• Subjects: Business logistics > Data processing; Medical Informatics Applications
• Online Access: https://repository.li.mahidol.ac.th/handle/123456789/89783
• Institution: Mahidol University

In general, it was difficult to obtain operational performance and collaboration of healthcare supply chain due to lack of data standards, lack of visibility and fragment of IT systems. So far, however, there has been little discussion about the interventions to successful operational performance and collaboration enhancement. Therefore, the motivation for this study was to investigate the stakeholders' difficulties and to propose the interventions to overcome these difficulties. To identify such difficulties, interviews, focus group and surveys were considered to gain a thorough understanding of stakeholders' difficulties. The findings indicated two main problems : differentiation of IT systems. Once the analysis were completed, a datapool was developed to overcome those difficulties and experimented at a hospital in Thailand to evaluate the interventions. The results of this experiment indicated that a datapool contribute to operational performance and collaboration for stakeholders in 3 areas including enabling real-time visibility, increasing information quality and reliability; and increasing operational performance through automatic collation processing function. In addition, it is also found that implementing a datapool with an EDI system could reduce 39 minutes on PO cycle time or Baht 915,975 cost savings annually.