SMI Releases Inaugural Executive Briefing: Comparative Effectiveness Research and the Healthcare Supply Chain

Scituate, MA (February 24, 2012): The Strategic Marketplace Initiative (SMI) today released the inaugural SMI Executive Briefing entitled “Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER) and the Healthcare Supply Chain.” SMI’s Executive Briefings are a new free tool for healthcare industry supply chain executives, offering thought-leader insights on emerging areas of impact and strategies for success.

SMI’s Executive Director Tom Hughes said “With so many new approaches and challenges emerging in the healthcare marketplace today, supply chain executives need a source for specific insights and strategies on new topics, like comparative effectiveness.  This inaugural Executive Briefing and all future briefings are designed to help executives quickly get up to speed on new topics and emerging strategies.”  

Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER) and the Healthcare Supply Chain is the work of a team of SMI members and collaborators that focused on understanding CER and its potential impact on supply chain.  Ted Donnelly, Director, Transformation Team – Acute Care at UHS of Delaware, Inc. and SMI Team Leader said “The need to be educated on the specifics of Comparative Effectiveness Research is addressed through a team of professionals generating a comprehensive view of the issue.  Ideally, this information will generate further discussions at the micro level at each institution in the interest of improved patient care and outcomes.” “CER is a complex initiative that is important to the future of healthcare,” said Dennis Black, Director, e-Business, BD. "The SMI team has created an Executive Overview on CER that can be helpful for supply chain leaders from healthcare providers and manufacturers as they get started on this initiative." 

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) and subsequent federal regulations provided the funding and governance for CER and is expected to accelerate CER’s influence on both hospitals and suppliers in the coming years.   Included in this Executive Briefing was the notion that CER could align provider supply chain programs with other cross-disciplinary hospital efforts, increase evidence-based discussions between physicians and supply chain, and may require the development of IT interfaces and analytics. The Executive Briefing states that CER may also impact the supplier community by increasing the influence of providers on the innovation priorities of manufacturer clinical studies and research.

This inaugural Executive Briefing is available for download, at no cost at the SMI website http://www.smisupplychain.com.

For more information on SMI, including a complete list of members, visit: www.smisupplychain.com.

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ABOUT SMI

The Strategic Marketplace Initiative (SMI) is a non-profit, member-driven organization dedicated to improving the supply chain through direct information exchange and collaboration between senior healthcare supply chain executives and senior IDN supply chain executives. SMI members include healthcare providers, manufacturers, medical distributors, and other healthcare supply chain businesses. SMI, created to influence, shape and advance the future of the healthcare marketplace, provides an open forum for innovative idea-exchange and the development of collaborative process improvement initiatives.