Modelling the Growing Process of Integrated Healthcare Supply Networks

Abstract

This work contributes to the practice of healthcare system modelling, by presenting an urgent issue: the growing process of integrated healthcare supply networks in reducing public healthcare systems' annual expenses and improving performance. Various critical aspects affect the strategic design and development of healthcare logistic networks in practice. The conceptual discussion is empirically derived on the basis of the challenge created by the development of centralized healthcare supply networks supported by the implementation of new IT/IS investments and advanced logistic hubs for hospital material inventory management. The study moves towards the development of a newer “Healthcare Supply Network Causal Loop Diagram”, to analyse and predict the growth pattern of a healthcare logistic network in its complexity, and understand how well the supply network will fit with the benefit provided by new logistic economies of scale and the risk of failures under uncertainty.