"There are some horrible working conditions; kids as young as seven making surgical instruments; people losing limbs. It's horrendous," says Mahmoud Bhutta, consultant surgeon and founder of the British Medical Association's (BMA) Medical Fair and Ethical Trade Group, established in 2007. "Many of the companies [which supply the NHS] have been burying their heads in the sand."

Aramex has launched a new cold supply chain service, available across all its MENA markets. Biocare, a solution for the healthcare sector, is designed to provide an end-to-end temperature-controlled delivery solution to move clinical specimens and medical samples domestically and globally for laboratories, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies.

U.S. hospitals spend tens of billions of dollars annually on high-tech surgical implants. But the supply chain for the devices is anything but high-tech. And that drives up costs both for hospitals and implant makers.

The hospital supply chain is becoming more strategic and taking a more prominent role in guiding decisions that weigh clinical outcomes against the costs of medical supplies, devices and prescription drugs. But it still has a long way to go.

GHX has announced Case Xpert and Order Intelligence, reportedly the healthcare industry's first end-to-end supply chain solutions for managing and tracking implantable medical devices, including the physician preference items (PPI) used in operating rooms.

A new survey by researchers at the University of Arkansas indicates that the healthcare industry's supply chain lags behind the retail industry supply chain and could benefit significantly from adopting several of retail's best practices.