In this exclusive interview with BioPharma APAC, Jorge Sahlieh, President of International Medical Products and Distribution at Cardinal Health, shares insights on how the company is addressing the financial pressures faced by healthcare institutions while ensuring high-quality patient care. He highlights Cardinal Health’s focus on customer-centric innovation, solutions for workforce efficiency, and sustainability strategies, all aimed at shaping the future of healthcare amidst global challenges.

How is Cardinal Health adapting its products and services to help healthcare institutions manage financial pressures while maintaining high-quality patient care?

The financial pressure on healthcare institutions is immense. Many institutions continue to see lower rates of medical procedures in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. This has been exacerbated by a global shortage of qualified healthcare workers, which has led to many institutions re-evaluating how capital should be deployed. The result is a gradual shift to addressing short-term needs as opposed to longer-term requirements.

Cardinal Health is a customer-centric company. By that, I mean we build our product strategies around our customers’ needs and develop solutions to address their business and patient care challenges. From my perspective, there are three critical challenges healthcare providers currently face:

• Delivering better patient outcomes cost effectively
• Navigating increasing financial and capacity constraints  
• Mitigating human resource shortages

We are focusing our efforts on developing medical devices that bridge the gap between the need for quality and the demand for savings. To accomplish this, we prioritize maintaining a deep of understanding of clinician challenges and patient needs. Both of which are constantly evolving. We then design products and devise solutions to help our customers deal with these challenges in a financially prudent manner without compromising on the delivery of high-quality patient care.  

In the face of acute labor shortages, what strategies are Cardinal Health implementing to assist healthcare providers in maximizing workforce efficiency?

I believe that process simplification is key to addressing the labor issues facing healthcare providers. As a partner to healthcare providers, we have a responsibility to identify how we can make work easier for clinicians while also advancing patient better outcomes. 

Medical device manufacturers can help alleviate labor challenges by designing medical products that are easier to use and devising solutions that free-up time for healthcare professionals so that they focus on patient care.

Take Cardinal Health’s ValueLink® solution in Canada as an example.  ValueLink® is an advanced distribution solution delivering unit-specific orders. Rather than supplying in bulk, ValueLink® provides customers with data-driven analytics on actual usage so that orders are placed in the appropriate unit of measure, picked, and delivered in totes and carts to predesignated areas within a healthcare facility. This helps healthcare professionals to remain focused on providing care and not performing operational tasks. This solution also helps healthcare facilities to alleviate space constraints, so that they can dedicate more space to administering care and performing critical surgeries, and not storing products.

Another example is our Kangaroo™ Connect enteral feeding platform, which transmits   nutrition attainment data from the enteral pump to healthcare professionals. Through remote monitoring, a clinician has clear visibility of the patient’s nutritional attainment and allows for real time adjustments to feed delivery if necessary. The pump’s functionality can also be remotely monitored to facilitate troubleshooting support.  

These innovations make it easier for healthcare professionals to track treatment outcomes, while reducing time spent on device management and troubleshooting. That means more time can be devoted to patient care.

How does Cardinal Health incorporate customer-centric innovation into its product development process to address unmet needs and enhance patient care?

Innovation is critical to the success of any company. Innovation applied well provides a company with a competitive edge in the marketplace. There is no one “best” way to drive innovation, but the approach that resonates most at Cardinal Health is Customer-centric Innovation, that is creating solutions based on a deep understanding of customers and their needs.

We put the customer at the centre of everything we do, and that is the foundation for how we innovate and invest. Cardinal Health prioritizes the customer experience and patient wellbeing, so we focus on delivering innovation that matters to healthcare providers and patients. 

Our new Kangaroo OMNI™ Enteral Feeding Pump provides a great example of how we address the evolving needs of both healthcare professionals and patients. The Kangaroo OMNI™ Enteral Feeding Pump is the first enteral pump designed to deliver nutrition, hydration and thick formula (pre-packed or homogenous blenderized food) in the hospital or long-term/home care settings. 

For healthcare professionals, the Kangaroo OMNI™ is an innovative pump that can feed, flush and deliver thick formula. It is also designed to help decrease rehospitalization rates by reducing the risk of cross-contamination and risks associated with dehydration and malnutrition. We also developed an intuitive interface with step-by-step prompts to program feeds and flushes, which makes it easy for clinicians to use.

The Kangaroo OMNI™ was also designed to help improve the lifestyle of enteral feeding patients and home caregivers. As a portable, adaptable and compact device it can be used anywhere. This has a huge impact on the patient’s ability to lead a more comfortable life, as the device enables them to join the rest of their family at mealtimes or on outings. 

Can you share examples of how Cardinal Health designs and manufactures products that deliver better patient and financial outcomes?

A few examples have been shared, but one more I can highlight is what we have done to reduce medical device servicing time. Specialised venous thromboembolism treatment or enteral feeding devices require regular servicing to ensure optimal operation. However, the time need to service or repair devices can vary depending on the type of medical device. This process can sometimes take up to 20-30 days. Losing access to medical equipment has an impact on patient care and places a strain on hospital resources. 

Last year, Cardinal Health began a pilot project together with one of our customers in the UK to reduce calibration and repair lead time. We were able to develop a new service that reduced turnaround time by 80%. The new process allows us to deliver medical devices to our customers in as little as three days. This new service is called “Advance Exchange Solutions” and is having a positive impact on patient care. AES has slashed the amount of labour required at healthcare institutions to maintain medical devices, while cutting servicing lead time, which has also helped to reduce the overall medical equipment maintenance costs. 

How is Cardinal Health addressing the challenge of sustainability in its operations, ensuring that healthcare needs are met without compromising future resources?

In our industry, we need to ensure that we are not compromising on our environmental, economic, or social responsibilities as we deliver on our goals of delivering better outcomes to customers and patients. 

Some of the key concerns we hear from customers include improving product packaging sustainability, reprocessing, recyclability, and the use of recycled materials. 

We also see greater demand for sustainability data. Healthcare providers want more clarity about greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) and how we can work with them to advance their climate goals.

This means we need to factor these concerns into our medical product development efforts. We are working to reduce waste and GHG emissions in our supply chain, and the also are advancing the adoption of single use medical device reprocessing (where permitted by local laws). We believe that reprocessing will be increasingly important to healthcare customers moving forward, as it helps reduce costs for customers and helps to drive sustainability goals.

What role do you see for medical device companies like Cardinal Health in shaping the future of healthcare amidst evolving global challenges?

The pandemic underscored how medical product companies need to become strategic partners across the continuum of healthcare. I believe closer collaboration between governments, healthcare providers and suppliers can drive better, more focused responses to global health concerns.   

As healthcare needs evolve, companies like Cardinal Health can play a role in helping healthcare providers to address current and future needs. In particular, I believe that there are three areas that Cardinal Health can contribute to in shaping the future of healthcare. 

The first is in ensuring we are developing the right products and solutions to meet the needs of healthcare providers and patients. I have already touched on this point in our discussion, but I would like to emphasize that innovation is only valuable if it helps to resolve the unmet needs or challenges of healthcare providers and patients.

The second is helping to address health disparities and increasing equitable access to care for patients and communities. We are committed to supporting our customers in providing the best possible care to patients, and we work with them and non-profit organizations to enable patients to improve access to care. For example, we work with payors to secure reimbursement approval for the use of medical products in pre and post operative care. These efforts help to reduce the financial burden on patients and ensure that healthcare providers are appropriately reimbursed for treatments. 

We have also invested in better processes and systems to make our International supply chain more resilient, so that we can deliver the right products at the right time to customers. Additionally, we are exploring how we can partner with customers in Japan, Australia & New Zealand, and Europe to provide medical care to patients in their homes. This will help free-up hospital capacity, while ensuring that patients continue to receive the care they need in a more comfortable and cost-effective manner. 

Finally, there is Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. We believe that by championing DE&I globally, we can create a more dynamic and equitable healthcare industry. DE&I helps to build a culture of holistic care for individuals and provides opportunities for community growth. It also plays a crucial role in innovation. Different perspectives and expertise are critical in driving innovation. We hope through our example, we can foster inclusive environments wherever we operate.  

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 Reference: Bischoff SC, Austin P, Boeykens K, et al. ESPEN guideline on home enteral nutrition. Clin Nutr. 2020;39(1):5-22. doi:10.1016/j.cl-nu-2019.04.2022