What’s inside:
- Healthcare systems often automate high-value inventory due to clear ROI, but low-cost bulk supplies remain manually managed—draining clinical time and driving inefficiencies.
- IDENTI addresses this with a data-driven SKU profiling model that evaluates each item by necessity, value, and demand to guide smart automation.
- Tailored technologies—from scanning tools to AI-powered weighing bins—are centrally managed by the IDENTIPlatform, delivering visibility, control, and measurable impact.
Why Supply Chain Automation Matters More Than Ever
While automating high-value inventory is often straightforward due to clear returns on investment—such as enhanced tracking, reduced shrinkage, and improved charge capture—many healthcare facilities hesitate to automate low-cost, high-use bulk supplies. The challenge lies in justifying the cost of automation for items with lower individual value, despite their undeniable operational importance.
This hesitation is understandable; however, it’s important to recognize that manual processes in managing these supplies can lead to inefficiencies and errors. By automating tasks such as procurement, inventory management, and logistics, healthcare organizations can reduce reliance on manual processes, allowing providers to focus more on delivering quality patient care instead of administrative inefficiencies.
Moreover, automation can bring significant cost savings by improving tracking accuracy, reducing paperwork, generating audit reports, and automating supply replenishment. By eliminating manual processes, healthcare facilities can save on labor costs and expedite inventory tracking. Therefore, while the initial investment in automating low-cost, high-use bulk supplies may seem challenging to justify, the long-term benefits—such as increased efficiency, reduced errors, and cost savings—make it a worthwhile consideration for healthcare facilities aiming to optimize their supply chain management.
The Hidden Costs of Manual Supply Management
Consumables like gloves, syringes, and wound dressings may carry a low per-unit cost, but their management is labor-intensive. Nurses and supply teams often spend hours manually monitoring, recording, and restocking these items. These inefficiencies cascade across the care continuum, creating stockouts, waste, and unnecessary delays.
IDENTI’s work with hospital leadership has shown that the real cost of manual supply chain processes is not just financial—it’s clinical. When nurses are pulled away from patient care to manage inventory, both productivity and quality are compromised.
Introducing SKU Profiling: A Smarter Way to Automate
IDENTI developed a data-backed framework called SKU profiling to help healthcare organizations strategically deploy automation across their supply chain. This model analyzes each SKU based on three critical factors:
- Necessity: How essential is the item to continuous patient care?
- Value: What is the financial risk of overstocking or stockouts?
- Demand: How frequently is the item used in each PAR location?
Each item receives a product automation score, enabling leaders to match each SKU to the appropriate level of supply chain automation technology.
Tailored Automation Based on SKU Profiles
Using this model, IDENTI offers a portfolio of automation solutions that correspond to low, medium, or high levels of automation need:
- The Scan & ReStock App offers low-level automation for general supplies in low-demand areas.
- The ReStock Tag provides a mid-level automation layer using RFID/barcode capabilities.
- The PAR Weighing Bin delivers high automation, ideal for mission-critical, high-turn supplies where real-time inventory data is essential.
All of these tools connect to the IDENTIPlatform, a centralized AI-powered inventory management system. The platform aggregates real-time usage data, generates actionable insights, and integrates directly with ERP systems and vendor portals to streamline replenishment workflows.
Real Results: Financial and Operational Gains
In a recent case study, a hospital using IDENTI’s hybrid supply chain automation system reduced inventory costs by 40% and cut logistics activity in half. Nurse satisfaction rose from 53% to 90%, driven by a substantial reduction in time spent on supply tasks.
These results speak to the broader value proposition of supply chain automation—not just cost reduction, but operational resilience, clinician satisfaction, and system-wide visibility.
In a compelling example of supply chain automation’s impact, Tobey Hospital, part of the SouthCoast Health System, transformed its PAR level management by implementing IDENTI’s AI-driven Wireless Weight-Based Bins. This innovative solution automated their inventory processes, reducing the reliance on nursing staff for supply management and ensuring critical items are consistently available. The seamless integration into existing supply spaces without the need for extensive infrastructure changes highlights the practical benefits of adopting advanced supply chain automation technologies.
Start with a Pilot, Scale Strategically
For organizations seeking to validate impact before scaling, IDENTI supports pilot deployments in one or more PAR locations. These pilots generate insights about SKU performance, demand cycles, and workflow integration—paving the way for broader, evidence-based rollouts of automation solutions tailored to each care area.
Modernizing Medical Supply Management
The management of medical consumables is one of the last frontiers of healthcare automation. With a tailored approach grounded in necessity, value, and demand, health systems can extend supply chain automation into this overlooked but vital category of inventory.
IDENTI’s framework and AI-driven platform enable organizations to right-size their automation strategy, improve visibility, reduce waste, and reallocate clinical time where it’s needed most—at the bedside.
