As healthcare continues to focus on a cost-to-serve strategy for managing healthcare cost, accurate data is a foundation block for understanding procedure costs and its relationship to desired clinical outcomes. Built on that is system interoperability. Once data is normalised, the ability to share data across many hospital systems and their internal technology support systems begins to be the norm rather than the exception. Healthcare providers must be able to understand the relationship between clinical and supply chain data.

The fact that today there is a lack of uniformity in standardised data impedes healthcare’s ability to react faster to an ever-changing ideal future state. At the highest level, providers need better information on procedure cost so they are better equipped to know the complete cost to deliver quality patient outcomes.

In 2014, providers and suppliers started to see a catalyst for standardised product data. That said it is not easy for organisations to obtain the data in a manner that can be easily integrated into its various systems, from the enterprise resource planning and materials management information system, to EHRs, billing systems, and product registries for clinical research.

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