Artificial intelligence is improving healthcare supply chains, but not in the flashy ways many expected.
Rather than replacing procurement teams or making purchasing decisions autonomously, supply chain leaders said the most promising use cases are eliminating repetitive work, improving visibility into operations and helping staff access information faster.
At Pittsburgh-based Highmark Health, Scott Meiser, vice president of supply chain, said AI and robotic process automation are helping the organization monitor high volumes of routine transactions that would otherwise require significant manual oversight.
“We talk about the transactional volume in healthcare and the fact that we can’t see every transaction, but that our customers expect us to — their transaction is the most important to them and it should be for us,” he said.
The technology now continuously monitors open order status, invoice discrepancies and distribution center stockouts, enabling staff to intervene only when exceptions require human attention.
“We refer to it as being able to ‘see the trees for the forest,'” Mr. Meiser said.
Customer service is another area where organizations see immediate value. Juan Serrato, associate vice president of supply chain informatics at Jacksonville, Fla.-based Baptist Health, said the system is exploring AI agents that can read and respond to emails to reduce support requests. Baptist Health has also deployed a “Supply Chain & Payments Assistant” that allows employees to check procurement transaction status, delivery updates and payment information without contacting support teams.
Predictive analytics are also becoming more sophisticated. Don Barton, chief technical officer and director of supply chain management at Shelbyville, Ind.-based Major Health Partners, highlighted AI-powered analytics that combine supply chain data from multiple systems to identify products at risk for backorders, recommend clinically appropriate alternatives, detect unusual demand patterns and provide real-time inventory visibility.
“For a community hospital like Major Hospital, this type of predictive intelligence allows us to proactively manage supply disruptions, helps maintain continuity of patient care, reduce manual analysis and make more informed purchasing decisions,” he said.
Some organizations are applying AI internally to improve workforce productivity.
At Chicago-based University of Chicago Medicine, Eric Tritch, senior vice president of supply chain and support services and chief supply chain officer, said the health system is deploying a tool that consolidates policies, standard work documents and training materials into a single AI-powered knowledge base.
Instead of searching through multiple documents, employees can ask questions in natural language while the system keeps policies synchronized as updates are made.
Bloomington, Minn.-based HealthPartners is taking a similar productivity-focused approach. Vini Manchanda, vice president of supply chain services, said the organization is training procurement and operations teams to maximize tools already available through Microsoft Copilot for tasks including technology research, policy writing, contract review, item additions and complex scenario analysis.
The health system is also preparing to transition to Oracle Cloud Redwood, which includes AI-enabled agents designed to support distribution and inventory management.
Still, leaders cautioned that AI is only as effective as the data behind it.
At Birmingham, Ala.-based Baptist Health Princeton Hospital, Les Feka, director of supply chain, said demand forecasting and procurement automation show promise but are often undermined by inconsistent data. Issues such as unit-of-measure discrepancies, varying box quantities and inconsistent part numbers can create inaccurate item master records, limiting the effectiveness of AI models.
“I have never encountered a hospital that is fully confident their data is clean, leading to garbage in, garbage out results,” Mr. Feka said.
Rather than focusing solely on new AI capabilities, he sees the biggest opportunity in automating data cleansing before information enters hospital systems.
“If you could develop an agent capable of cleansing existing system files so they are 100% accurate, that could provide substantial benefits,” he said.
At the Becker's 11th Annual IT + Revenue Cycle Conference: The Future of AI & Digital Health, taking place September 14–17 in Chicago, healthcare executives and digital leaders from across the country will come together to explore how AI, interoperability, cybersecurity, and revenue cycle innovation are transforming care delivery, strengthening financial performance, and driving the next era of digital health. Apply for complimentary registration now.