Changing political conditions, as well as an increasing pressure of rising costs in the healthcare sector, has made a steady alignment necessary in this field. Economical and efficient services in healthcare logistics, which can adjust the things flexibly, can provide essential advancement in the fields of medicine, research and care provision.

Introduction to Healthcare Logistics

Healthcare logistics include the logistical supply of medical, pharmaceutical and surgical equipment, as well as devices and other products to help healthcare and dental care providers including doctors and nurses. The concept of healthcare logistics is unique in the sense that it focuses on increasing the effectiveness of the whole system, instead of increasing its efficiency as their final users are accountable for the health and lives of their patients.

The important part of healthcare logistics is to control the costs of medical supplies and after-care staff, which are considered as the most expensive component in this sector. The providers of healthcare logistics adopt the theories of supply chain management to cut down the costs of logistically managing the healthcare sector.

Working in Healthcare Logistics

Healthcare logistics providers work as innovative partners to develop extraordinary solutions for their clients in the field of healthcare, usually by starting from their basic needs up to the realisation of a wide variety of healthcare facilities. The main task of a healthcare logistics team is to plan and optimise the logistics in and around centres of healthcare provision, including hospitals and nursing homes.

Typically, a project manager will be deployed with a workforce competent enough to handle various disciplines, ultimately providing integrated planning and optimisation across almost every service that a hospital provides; this broad knowledge is what gives logistical healthcare providers their value. These services will continue even after delivering their services. Most go on helping their designated healthcare centres, including hospitals and corporate medical centres, in the successful implementation of their logistical planning.

The working of healthcare logistics providers can be divided into three main categories:

• Logistics of medical equipment and devices

• Logistics of clinical or biomedical engineering

• Logistics of the management of facilities

A qualified Director of Logistics, with educational qualifications akin to an accredited degree such as an MS, MBA or PhD, manages all these fields to accomplish the process successfully.

Importance of Logistics in Healthcare Sectors

The modernisation in organisation and technology has equally supported growth in the healthcare sector, as it has played an important role in improving the production, distribution and growth of this industrial sector during last few years. The continuity of this trend has increased the speed of growth in many sectors within the healthcare industry.

Healthcare logistics has changed the basic conditions for basic service providers, in a similar way to many other industries. The main players in the healthcare sector started investing in healthcare logistics because of increasing pressures of costs and rough rivalries, costly research projects and increasing regulatory expenses. The method adopted by healthcare logistics providers starts right from the production of the supplies; their storage at the point of distribution ends after reaching their end users.

Thus, today healthcare logistics has become indispensable to take an integrated viewpoint to the next level of distribution, instead of ending at a single company to continue the improvement and development in the field of healthcare services.