ABSTRACT
Recently, artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as a crucial tool for managing the intricacies of business issues, including healthcare. COVID-19 has highlighted the fragmented “just-in-time” supply chain model and the absence of system and data integration at hospitals and health systems as the reasons why it is impossible to get the essential supplies during a medical emergency. In terms of patient care, logistics for the healthcare system, and disease diagnosis, AI technology outperforms humans. Therefore, in order to boost cost savings, improve patient experience, and meet staffing needs, hospitals, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and humanitarian groups in catastrophe scenarios are searching for AI solutions. Healthcare is gradually adopting AI and associated technologies such as machine learning, robots, and stochastic optimization as they become more common in daily life and business. This technology is utilised for many therapeutic and investigative applications, including drug discovery, chronic disease management, medical services, and diagnosis. This chapter identified the need and role of AI in the healthcare supply chain (HSC). The novel and potential AI techniques that can improve the practice of HSC were explored. This chapter has enlisted common AI techniques used in HSC and given some brief examples of their usage in subfields. It has also identified the different barriers in adoption of AI in the healthcare supply chain and the impact of COVID-19 on public healthcare supply networks. In conclusion, AI has the potential to enhance logistics through analytics, forecasting, stock taking, inventory backorders, data governance, and labour substitution with its debut in the field of healthcare supply chain management. Any company or organisation that wants to integrate artificial intelligence into their healthcare supply chain management system must carefully consider their goals and put solutions in place.
