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Cardinal Health to share latest offerings with healthcare supply chain leaders at national conference

Cardinal Health is a proud sponsor of and exhibitor at AHRMM24, the annual gathering of some 4,000 healthcare executives and supply chain leaders hosted by the Association for Health Care Resource & Materials Management, from September 22 through 25 in Columbus, Ohio. Throughout the conference, leaders from Cardinal Health’s Global Medical Products and Distribution (GMPD), WaveMark^™ Solutions and OptiFreight® Logistics businesses will be onsite showcasing comprehensive offerings and innovations strengthening the healthcare supply chain.

“We’re excited to be part of this year’s conference and are eager to visit with industry leaders to share more about the work we’re doing to serve our customers and deliver resiliency in supply chain solutions and medical product distribution.” said Jeff Porubcansky, Senior Vice President, U.S. Distribution and Core Products, Laboratory Products and WaveMark^™ Solutions. “We invite show attendees to stop by our booth and learn how smart logistics, seamless workflows and scalable solutions enable us to provide products and services to our customers when and where they need them so they can provide the best patient care.”  

Recently, Cardinal Health’s focus on supply chain resiliency was recognized with a Resiliency Badge and Diamond-level rating from nonprofit consortium Healthcare Industry Resilience Collaborative (HIRC). HIRC is a healthcare industry benchmark; The Diamond level – and highest award possible for the Resiliency Badge – indicates outperforming scores for Cardinal Health’s medical products distribution business in key areas vital to a resilient supply chain.

Pete Bennett, Senior Vice President, Global Supply Chain, GMPD, said, “Our dedication to supply chain resiliency and transparency starts with our customers. We work relentlessly to understand their evolving needs and how we can best meet them, while continuing to invest in our business with new infrastructure, technology, automation and operational efficiencies that strengthen our supply chain.”

Emily Gallo, Senior Vice President and General Manager, OptiFreight® Logistics, will also be onsite. “One of the most rewarding aspects of my work is meeting with customers and hearing directly from them about their needs and how we can best serve them and support their growth. I’m very much looking forward to attending this year’s conference,” she said.

Here is a brief look at what AHRMM24 attendees will discover at Cardinal Health’s booth, #229.

Medical distribution: Driving supply chain strength through a commitment to collaboration, transparency and innovation

For 50 years, the company’s medical product distribution business has helped healthcare facilities receive the medical products and solutions they need to meet tomorrow’s challenges.

The organization offers scaled solutions delivering flexibility to health systems across all departments and sites of care. Its tools and data-driven resources allow customers to make actionable decisions, including the ability to review order and delivery status, see available products and alternatives, opportunities for optimizations and more.

Additionally, the business is growing its distribution footprint with new, state-of-the art facilities and expanded product inventory capacity to meet their growing needs, further driving supply chain resiliency. In August, the company announced a new distribution center (DC) opening in Northeast Ohio in spring 2025 – in addition to a new DC that opened earlier this year in the Boston, Mass., area., as well as facilities that opened in 2023 in Central Ohio and Montgomery, N.Y.

The business is also driving the next generation of technology solutions designed to optimize the supply chain and improve customer experience.

“Our team is focused on delivering operational excellence with investments in technology and automation to improve quality of service and work experiences for our team members,” Bennett said. “For example, we’ve been using and testing a variety of robotic solutions across our medical product distribution network for several years now to drive productivity and performance.”

Cardinal Health is testing wholistic solutions offering enhanced software capabilities and a single workflow for picking and product movement in a facility that can be supported by goods-to-person robotics – creating a more dynamic, resilient, and responsive operation. Goods-to-person technology, which combines automated storage and retrieval of products, does exactly what it sounds like: brings products directly to employees to pick and pack.

Many of these technologies are first vetted in an Innovation Lab located in a Central Ohio DC. Here, team members test new technologies designed to improve warehouse fulfillment procedures in real working environments. They focus on solutions that directly support operational efficiencies, as part of Cardinal Health’s strategy to modernize its distribution network. New solutions must have the capacity to help the DCs meet tight delivery windows, advance product quality, and most importantly, improve the customer experience.

Cardinal Health team members will be onsite at AHRMM24 to discuss these exciting resources, investments and network growth – all aimed to improve supply chain resiliency.

WaveMark^™ Solutions: New product offerings help unlock paths to increased supply chain visibility
According to an article published in the journal Omega, supply expense is the second largest hospital expenditure after labor and personnel costs. Expenses are particularly high in operating rooms and procedural rooms where high-cost implants and supplies are routinely used, accounting for 40-60% of hospital supply expenditures, according to the journal Health Systems.

More effective supply management is possible, thanks to WaveMark^™ Solutions, a digitally automated clinical supply chain solution delivering enterprise visibility. WaveMark^™ Solutions links product usage to the patient record at the moment of care, providing both inventory documentation and insights to support real-time product level availability and help protect patients from recalled or expired products.

With WaveMark^™ Solutions, hospitals can manage medical supplies on a single, scalable platform. For their operating rooms, procedural labs and nursing units, they gain a more accurate view of their supply chain to support product availability, optimize clinical workflows, improve financial performance and enhance patient safety.

Attendees at the AHRMM24 conference will get a first look at the new WaveMark™ AutoOrder Shelf with Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) automated demand technology that streamlines workflows by systematically triggering orders for consumable products to ensure product availability and improve efficiency. This solution allows health systems to acquire the latest in RFID demand signal technology to automate medical consumable workflow – streamlining order processes and reducing manual touchpoints. And by ensuring consumable product availability, providers can continuously deliver the best in patient care.  

Conference attendees also will have the opportunity to learn about the WaveMark™ Procedure Card Optimizer, an advanced analytics module that integrates procedure card optimization and clinical supply chain inventory technology to help customers avoid waste, increase staff satisfaction and drive efficiency in the operating room.

Supply waste in operating and procedural rooms doesn’t just impact patient care, it also impacts hospital cost and performance, Porubcansky explained. “Upon implementing and successfully optimizing our WaveMark^™ Solutions, we’re seeing our health system customers completely transform their clinical supply chains – they’re reducing supply waste, saving costs and driving efficiencies. We look forward to welcoming AHRMM attendees into our booth where we’ll be demonstrating our latest WaveMark offerings.”

OptiFreight® Logistics: Expertise and logistics data strengthen customers’ supply chains

Backed by decades of experience and industry-leading scale – and on display at AHRMM24 – OptiFreight® Logistics is empowering data-driven healthcare logistics strategies. The business helps customers look at their shipping spend, including inbound and outbound parcel and freight shipments across every department or location, and provides strategic recommendations about the most cost-effective shipping methods and timing considerations. OptiFreight® Logistics helps customers find and manage controllable carrier fees and can uncover and potentially eliminate unnecessary handling fees.

“OptiFreight® Logistics helps innovate the way leaders manage logistics and enables them to remove costs from their supply chain,” Gallo said. “We customize the solutions, technology and critical insights that our customers need to take greater control over their shipping and logistics strategy.”

It’s critical for OptiFreight® Logistics to act as an expert extension of a customer’s team, as healthcare providers across the continuum of care are under more pressure than ever to find cost savings and efficiency across operations. Through supply chain expertise, robust carrier relations, unmatched supplier engagement, and data-driven insights provided by OptiFreight® Logistics, customer savings totaled over $800 million last year*. At the same time, healthcare providers simply have to ensure they get the right products at the right time to maintain optimal patient care.

OptiFreight® Logistics offers TotalVue™ Insights, a comprehensive, cloud-based platform that harnesses the power of logistics data through tracking and analytics with actionable insights to help customers realize the full potential of their logistics strategy. It also provides TotalVue™ Tracking, an online dashboard, that gives customers near real-time shipment status, helping them to act decisively and plan strategically.

OptiFreight® Logistics manages more than 22 million shipments a year for more than 2,000 healthcare customers**, including health systems, hospitals, pharmacies, surgery centers, laboratories, and more. “That breadth means we have an enormous amount of benchmark data, which enables customers to establish goals and focus on the areas that will help them reach those goals,” Gallo said.

Visit the Cardinal Health booth (#229) during this year’s AHRMM conference to learn more about the company’s medical distribution, WaveMark™ Solutions and OptiFreight® Logistics businesses. For additional questions or interest in speaking with a member of the Cardinal Health team during or after AHRMM24, please contact Brittany Julian at brittany.julian@cardinalhealth.com.

*Based on OptiFreight® Logistics internal customer data from January 1 – December 31, 2023. Individual savings may vary.
**Metric based on 2024 fiscal year performance.