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In celebration of National Health Care Supply Chain Week, we sat down with Peter J. Siavelis, SVP and general manager of Health System and Provider Distribution & Services at Cardinal Health, to discuss how the company is investing in innovative technology to adapt to healthcare supply chain needs.

In this interview, Siavelis highlights how the new Cardinal Health™ InteLogix™ Platform is reshaping the pharmaceutical supply chain to improve access to critical medications and reduce the cost of care for hospitals and health systems.

Q: What are some of the biggest challenges that you see in the pharmaceutical supply chain?  

A: The pharmaceutical supply chain is complex and involves many stakeholders, including manufacturers and group purchasing organizations (GPOs – entities that aggregate purchasing volume and negotiate discounts), distributors, retailers and hospitals, to name a few. This complexity can lead to disconnect at times that can cause delays in sharing information and response time for supply and demand. As a result, information that supply chain leaders need – such as upstream logistics data like supply shortages and downstream clinical data like changes in patients’ medication needs – is delayed.

Because supply chain stakeholders lack complete, real-time access to this type of data, upstream response to changing patient populations and their medication needs is slowed, and downstream providers of healthcare lack predictive trend data to better prepare hospital drug inventories for those new patients.

Q: What is Cardinal Health doing to help hospitals and health systems overcome these challenges?

A: At the beginning of 2023, Cardinal Health announced the development of a breakthrough solution, now called the InteLogix™ Platform, which enables a more rapid response to changes in supply and demand across the supply chain for hospitals and health systems.

The InteLogix™ Platform is the first proactive pharmaceutical supply chain solution for hospitals that leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning to provide health systems with predictive analytics to simplify and streamline medication supply.

Q: Why is the InteLogix™ Platform such a game changer for health systems? What makes it unique?

A: It was important for Cardinal Health, and my team specifically, to collaborate with our hospitals and health systems to manage rising drug expenses, supply chain volatility and drug shortages.

The InteLogix™ Platform supports a suite of solutions and capabilities across the pharmaceutical supply chain. For hospitals and health systems, it will ultimately enable predictive drug inventory analysis, reimbursement insights and therapeutic utilization trend data.

It is unique in that the InteLogix™ Platform optimizes the pharmaceutical supply chain for all stakeholders. I think this video does a really great job of explaining how the solution works.  

Q: What solutions is Cardinal Health offering to our customers now through the InteLogix™ Platform?

A: One of the first solutions our hospital and health system customers are using is the InteLogix™ Contract Optimizer. This is a dashboard that provides actionable insights that drive value through contract compliance, cost controls and product alternatives for generics and blood plasma.

Through decision support insights with the InteLogix™ Contract Optimizer, hospitals can optimize drug purchases by analyzing contract compliance, alternative product data and brand-to-generics savings, as well as generic-to-generic savings.

In fact, during a recent three-month period, the InteLogix™ Contract Optimizer identified $8.25 million in savings for the hundreds of hospitals already leveraging the insights. Just as important, the InteLogix™ Contract Optimizer is helping hospitals better understand the total impact of individual drug purchases, including compliance impacts, purchase savings and the cost of change.

Q: What is next for the InteLogix™ Platform? What can our hospital and health system customers look forward to?

A: We have several new solutions in development, such as expanding the decision support capabilities of the InteLogix™ Contract Optimizer to optimize purchase decisions for biosimilar drugs and specialty medications. The new platform will help minimize the complexity and manage the cost of specialty medications and provide insights for biosimilars’ reimbursement and evolving payor formulary updates. These new solutions are exciting, as hospitals continue to face challenges with the increase in drug expenses due to the growth of specialty therapies and in navigating changing payor requirements for biosimilars.

Other future solutions of the InteLogix™ Platform will focus on providing predictive analytics and real-time data for hospital pharmacies to optimize drug inventories, and eventually include actionable insights on local community disease trend data, so that our front-line acute care providers are better able to respond to future healthcare needs in their communities.

To learn more about the InteLogix™ Platform, visit cardinalhealth.com/InteLogix.

Peter J. Siavelis is the senior vice president and general manager of Cardinal Health’s Health System and Provider business. A veteran healthcare executive, he oversees traditional and specialty pharmaceutical distribution sales and services for health systems, hospitals, specialty physician offices, long-term and alternate care facilities and community health centers across the country.