PTA Presents to 300 Health Supply and Procurement Officers
PTA CEO, Dean Whiting, gave a plenary presentation at the 36th annual Association of Health Supply and Procurement Officers (AHSPO) conference in Lorne, Victoria.
Starting with a brief survey of the audience which indicated that about 1 quarter of the room were involved in pathology procurement, but very few knew much of the pathology sector, Dean covered a high-level view of the role of pathology, splitting the sector into screening, aid to diagnosis, and monitoring.
Dean then described the complexities associated with the pathology test and technology supply chain, including cold-chain, short shelf-life and lot management. He emphasised that more than 98% of all tests and technology come from somewhere else, mostly North America and Europe. Using the Middle East crisis as a pertinent example, he drove home that Australia is at the end of the supply chain – and we are very vulnerable to geopolitical disturbances.
The suggestion was for procurement teams to work with suppliers to develop longer term forecasts and commitments, giving greater certainty to suppliers.
While it is unrealistic for Australia to be self-sufficient in most pathology technology, Dean believes we can be world leaders in some sectors. “We are particularly good at inventing point of care technology, novel genomic tests and some digital health applications,” he said. Evidence was shared demonstrating that almost none of the hundreds of med tech innovations funded by grants in Australia end up being purchased by health procurement officers.
Dean proposed that directing just 5% of the total $8Bil spend on medical technology per year, could make a huge difference to local manufacturers.
The theme of this year’s AHSPO conference was AI. There were some excellent presentations discussing the trends and the likely role of AI in procurement. Mark Cameron, CEO of Alyve, gave a very well researched presentation demonstrating that use of AI simply to gain efficiencies misses the point of this powerful tool. Mark gave the analogy from the industrial era, when electrical power took over from steam. Mark’s observation was that it took decades to realise that they had to completely rethink the way factories worked to get the most from electricity. It will be the same for AI according to Mark.
Tracey Duffy from the TGA was guest speaker at the conference. Tracey talked about the obligations of companies promoting the use of AI in healthcare to understand the regulatory requirements. This becomes especially important when patient information is involved, for example, where an AI application has been trained on patient data. The regulatory expectation is that patient data is removed from an AI model at the patient’s request.
Dean finished off his presentation reflecting on the move from using spreadsheets to manage inventory and purchasing to using AI. As Dean said, “AI makes mistakes, just like humans do, and sometimes because of the humans.” Dean pointed out that much of current underlying computer programming and platforms were built decades ago and had not considered the needs of AI. This is a potential limitation for the durability, accountability and functionality of AI.
Dean reflected very positively on the role of AI in healthcare and procurement and said it will take some time to develop new ways of working but that this will be a net benefit to people and the economy.