23 September 2022 by Mat Oram
We had a great couple of days in Brussels for the inaugural Health Procurement Summit. Established by our close friends, Elisa and Danny, the event was attended by over 550 buyers and suppliers from all corners of Europe. On the ground, we were joined by colleagues from NHS England, NHS Commercial Solutions and Genmed to discuss all things procurement and showcase our analytics technology, which is used by more than 200 NHS trusts.
On day one, we presented a session that focused on the importance of data, with reference to each of the Summit’s key>themes: transparency, digitisation and sustainability. We also took the opportunity to showcase some of the work we have been undertaking to tackle clinical variation and cost from a product choice perspective versus more traditional unit price. A special thanks goes out to Pete, Alison and Neil for sharing their insights on the panel, and I had the pleasure of chairing the session. During the panel discussion, we heard a range of perspectives, with one panel member explaining that “there is a fiduciary requirement for procurement to analyse data”. It was also refreshing to hear from the Healthcare Director of Microsoft, who described data and analysis as “the number one priority for healthcare procurement teams.”
On Day 2 of the Summit, we attended a number of talks, covering everything from supply chain resilience (there’s some great work in the Netherlands to map their supply chains!), to sustainability and the impact something as simple as an inhaler can have on the environment. It was fascinating to learn about some of the exciting work being undertaken across Europe, such as Portugal, where they’ve pulled together over 2,000 procurement KPIs onto a single platform and made all the information open and accessible through APIs. This included information as specific as who had delivered what savings. Quite Amazing!
As is always the case, the highlight of the event was the people. It was brilliant to meet friends from HealthPro Canada (Jennifer, Kendra, Christine) and catch up with Praful from Vamstar. And of course, we had the pleasure of talking about all things XMED-iQ with Dieter, Christoph and Markus.
A big thanks to Louis POTEL, Carolina and Teja for doing a fantastic job organising their first conference.
It’s safe to say we’re really looking forward to the next event and exploring opportunities to collaborate across Europe!
