Premier, Inc. a leading technology-driven healthcare improvement company, and Resilinc, the leading supply chain monitoring, mapping and resiliency solution, today announced a new collaboration to drive greater supply chain transparency, risk mitigation and business continuity for U.S. healthcare providers.
Supply chain disruptions spiked 67 percent in 2020, with the impact of these disruptions rippling across the globe as demand for critical medical supplies and drugs surged 7X to 30X. COVID-19 highlighted the lack of downstream supply chain visibility and reinforced the urgent need to better understand product availability and risk as providers have struggled to access vital healthcare products and medications.
The Resilinc and Premier initiative expands Premier’s supply chain mapping footprint to encompass more than 1,300 suppliers and 15,000 sites – a vital capability alongside our nation’s still-limited knowledge on the manufacturing locations and production volume for American drugs and medical products. Leveraging Resilinc’s Multi-Tier Mapping service will give Premier visibility down to the site, product and ingredient/part levels for its top supplier partners, allowing for greater transparency into potential vulnerabilities to help ensure continuity of supply. Premier will also utilize Resilinc’s RiskShield, which provides comprehensive supplier risk scores based on geographic diversity, recovery time, quality, Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) and sustainability practices, and other key criteria.
In addition to enhanced supply chain mapping and supplier risk assessments, Premier will leverage EventWatchAI, Resilinc’s 24/7 monitoring service. EventWatchAI uses artificial intelligence and natural language processing technology to monitor for over 50 types of potentially disruptive events across millions of news, social media and government agency feeds in 189 countries and 100 languages.
Our collaboration with Resilinc is yet another step forward in Premier’s steadfast, multi-year commitment to protect healthcare providers from shortages. From our domestic manufacturing investments to our industry-leading drug shortage program, direct sourcing arm and PINC AI™ technology suite, no other group purchasing organization has the comprehensive strategy and tools to help eliminate shortages and supply chain vulnerabilities. This partnership also aligns with Premier’s ESG commitment – our members and other partners deserve more transparency to help fulfill our collective mission to improve the health of communities.”
David A. Hargraves, Senior Vice President of Supply Chain for Premier.
“We’re thrilled to expand our partnership with Premier to include more robust supply chain mapping and supplier risk assessment capabilities. These two areas are crucial to business continuity, especially in the healthcare supply chain,” said Resilinc’s CEO and co-founder, Bindiya Vakil. “The visibility supply chain mapping provides is the foundation of risk management and transparency. That, combined with knowledge about the potential risk areas across the supplier network, allows for a deeper understanding of issues and the ability to offset any brand or logistical trouble.”
Premier and Resilinc’s partnership goes back to 2018. Throughout that time, the two companies have collaborated on multiple projects aimed at increasing the maturity of global healthcare supply chains. Key projects include The Exchange, a cloud-based platform for hospitals to interact with vetted peer organizations to identify, locate and exchange critical medical items, and the Healthcare Transparency Initiative, a first of its kind collaboration focused exclusively on improving transparency and reducing disruptions in the healthcare supply chain.
About Premier, Inc.
Premier, Inc. is a leading healthcare improvement company, uniting an alliance of more than 4,400 U.S. hospitals and health systems and approximately 225,000 other providers and organizations to transform healthcare. With integrated data and analytics, collaboratives, supply chain solutions, and consulting and other services, Premier enables better care and outcomes at a lower cost. Premier plays a critical role in the rapidly evolving healthcare industry, collaborating with members to co-develop long-term innovations that reinvent and improve the way care is delivered to patients nationwide.