World listens to Windsor prof, now
Expert on medical supply chain has warned about risks for years
Suddenly, people are listening to Anne Snowdon.
The University of Windsor professor — one of the world’s top health-care supply chain experts — has warned for years medical networks must be updated and digitally enabled.
Some health teams in Ontario still manually count supplies, said Snowdon, who is also scientific director and CEO of Supply Chain Advancement Network in Health.
Her arguments didn’t always get a lot of attention. Then the COVID-19 pandemic exploded, putting a strain on medical supplies almost everywhere.
Since then, Snowdon has fielded several interview requests, including one for an Apple podcast last week.
“It’s all around achieving the very best outcomes for COVID -19, and understanding this isn’t going away any time soon,” said Snowdon, a professor of strategy and entrepreneurship, and academic chair of the World Health Innovation Network at Odette School of Business.
“We need to create that infrastructure to keep people safe. Not just in health-care but also in communities and where you live or go to your dentist or grocery store. I have suddenly become more popular with that realization. It’s like someone shone a light on what I’ve been trying to say but clearly not getting across for a long time.”
Since the COVID-19 pandemic struck, there have been reports in many places including Canada about supply shortages. Worried citizens rushed to buy up masks and gloves. Many people have resorted to making their own masks.
But Snowdon said this is about more than having masks for going to the grocery store.
“It’s protecting the workforce so you have the capacity to care for patients, and having all the medications and lab testing and protective masks and gowns and face shields,” she said.
“All of those pieces are important to effectively manage this pandemic. There is a registry right now coming together on how many and what are the products urgently needed to manage COVID. There are 36,009 products on that registry, which has been supported and informed by 200 global health systems.”
Transform Shared Service, which manages the supply chain for five hospitals across the Eriest. Clair LHIN, said things are digitally enabled here and there are no shortages.
“Through careful planning, forecasting and working with the government on acquiring PPE and supplies for our region, we are okay for now,” said Derek Robertson, vice-president of business development. “This is constantly monitored and we continue to seek out potential suppliers in the event that there is a need for additional supplies. Transform is also helping to manage some of the donations for the region as required.”
Ontario’s Ministry of Health said the government previously launched the Supply Chain Centralization Initiative “to make it easier and more efficient to deliver services and to do business with the public sector.”
The province buys supplies in bulk for the entire public sector with an eye to saving money.
“The Supply Chain Centralization Initiative focuses on optimizing and innovating procurement and supply-chain processes across Ontario’s public sector, delivering innovation, reducing red tape, improving outcomes and delivering savings — making the most of every dollar the province spends,” the ministry said in an email.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the province said it has “accelerated work” in several areas. That includes “centralization of public-sector procurement for critical supplies and equipment” to leverage purchasing power in a “constricted global marketplace.”
Officials did not elaborate on the status of that work or what the centralization would look like.
But technologically, Snowdon said, Ontario is still behind.
“Teams in Ontario are manually counting: how many masks do we have? How many ventilators do we have?” she said. “They enter that data on an Excel file and report that to health system leaders. That’s an entirely manual system.”
Other provinces are similar, she said.
“Some are better than others,” Snowdon said. “But what that means is we simply don’t have data on our hand-held devices that say, ‘do we have the N-95 masks for our care teams who need it?’”
Snowdon, who has interviewed health teams around the world, said she’s found two jurisdictions doing it right with “extremely digitally enabled health systems.”
There’s one in the U.S. The other is Alberta, which is sending supplies to other provinces.
“Those are the only two health systems I’ve been able to find who have had no challenges with supplies.”
She said health-care systems should look to other business sectors, such as the airport industry, where the expertise has long been put to use.
“It’s all digitally enabled,” she said. “If a brake fails on a runway in Denver, every airport in the world knows about that brake failure and what plane and who manufactures those brake pads, within 30 minutes.
“In health care, no such system exists. Nowhere.”
Snowdon said Canada learned some valuable lessons from SARS that have helped during the COVID-19 pandemic. But at the same time, she said, there’s a lot that hasn’t changed.
“The Spanish flu was 100 years ago. There are records and photos from the Spanish flu instructing people how to make masks. It is not lost on me that we are still making masks 100 years later.”
It is not lost on me that we are still making masks 100 years later.