One of the regions first Healthcare GPO’s (Group purchasing Organisation) launched into the United Arab Emirates this month, announcing an MOU at GITEX Technology week with leading software supplier JAGGAER. Group purchasing organisations are member-based entities that assist healthcare providers such as hospitals and clinics to optimise their supply chain implementing best practices from around the world, adopting leading technologies and processes that deliver real savings and efficiencies to the bottom line of its members.
Since the beginning of the global COVID 19 pandemic healthcare procurement and supply chain leaders have seen unprecedented pressure to optimise their processes and drive efficiencies. Bridge Medical GPO is an industry focused organisation that delivers value to each stakeholder level and they do not compete with product distributors or vendors. Their vendor value chain is quite extensive and includes reducing supply chain and logistics costs through aggregation and supply efficiencies.
A GPO aggregates purchasing volume of members for healthcare consumables and medical devices and develops contracts with suppliers through which its members may procure at group pricing and terms if they choose to. GPOs typically provide contracted discounts on a-z of healthcare procurement items including medical supplies, nutrition, pharmacy and laboratory.
In the United States, GPOs started evolving towards the end of the 1950s. As of 1962, there were 10 GPOs in existence. Growth of GPOs accelerated in the 1970s and by the end of that decade more than 120 GPOs were in operation. As GPOs grew during the 1980s and 1990s, so did their membership. For example, in 1992 it was estimated that 88 percent of hospitals were members of a GPO (Scott,1995). By 1994, there was only 27 U.S. hospitals that did not belong to a GPO. The typical large GPO today includes hospitals and clinics of all sizes and institutions providing both general and specialized health services.
Bridge Medical GPO Trading LLC has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with JAGGAER which will see the start-up healthcare GPO leveraging JAGGAER’s Tejari spend management procurement platform.
The new partnership, which was officially unveiled at GITEX Technology Week 2021 and will see JAGGAER provide a SaaS based source-to-pay solution designed to automate routine processes with the help of machine learning enabling global procurement teams to create even more value in both the short and the long term.
JAGGAER was selected ahead of 10 other software platforms thanks to its global best practices and ability to meet the needs of Bridge Medical GPO and its customers.
The company has now outlined a plan which will focus on delivering performance optimisation across the entire UAE healthcare sector. This will include implementing industry-best practice for procurement and optimising supply chains to bring increased commercial benefits to hospitals, distributors, and providers in the region.
Darren Martin, Director of Commercial and Group Operations, said: “Powerful Procurement Partners is our value proposition and represents who we are and our promise to our members. We are excited to be signing this MOU today with JAGGAER and working together with Dubai Smart Government to deliver the Vision of H. H. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai.”
Hany Mosbeh, Vice President of Sales Middle East & Africa, JAGGAER, said: “We are delighted to partner with Bridge Medical GPO to help them deliver this unique and innovative service in the Middle East. JAGGAER is committed to focusing on utilising the latest technology and innovation to support organizational procurement goals and this dovetails extremely well with Bridge Medical GPO who have built an excellent business model focused on optimising supply chain costs within the healthcare industry.”
Jim Counts, President and CEO of Bridge Medical GPO, concluded “Speed to value is fundamentally what we deliver for our members, bottom line improvement to hospital profitability is our guarantee.”