The Arizona State University MEDLOG Project – A Roadmap to Industry Best Practice (IBP)

The overall goal of the two-year project was to enable Defense Health Agency (DHA) medical logistics (MEDLOG) to optimize performance and provide high quality services while reducing logistics variability at the point of care through the identification of new systems, processes, and innovations that could support this goal. The project scrutinized the technology and business process opportunities surrounding the ongoing technical refresh of the current supply chain and logistics systems into the enterprise wide system, LogiCole.

Drawing upon a distinguished industry advisory group, observations from the field, and a research team consisting of experts that have extensive experience in this field, the team compared the military medical logistics system and supply chain to industry best practices, thus providing DHA with a foundation to become a fully integrated supply chain organization (FISCO). Detailed roadmaps for moving forward were provided for six FISCO functions: (1) authoritative data management, (2) product standardization, (3) contracting, (4) inventory management, (5) asset management, and (6) product recall management. Individually, and in concert, improving these functions supports the goals of:

• establishing more efficient and effective business processes;
• achieving superior clinical performance;
• integrating the supply chain and logistics functions across the medical supply chain; and
• reducing DHA’s dependency on external resources.

ASU's team also developed a prototype for recall management that will assure a reduction in risk to patients throughout military medical facilities.