About the Presentation

The United States spends over twice as much on healthcare per person as other industrialized nations. This has prompted initiatives to improve healthcare outcomes and lower costs.

One area targeted for cost savings is the supply chain. While the supply chain in other industries, such as retail, have been optimized using Point of Service (POS) technologies and Just in Time (JIT) techniques, the framework for delivering healthcare contradicts many of the foundational assumptions of supply chain solutions. The result is that healthcare providers carry medical device inventory in a complex mix of consigned and purchased products, valued at millions of dollars, yet still plagued by problems of product expiration, overstocking, stock shortages, and human error.

This presentation is the first of a two-part series. It will describe a systems approach to optimizing the supply chain of high value consumable medical devices, as realized in the WaveMark platform. The guiding principles are that accuracy in terms of product availability is critical to patient outcome, and that optimization can only be achieved through end-to-end visibility of the product life cycle across the supply chain, from the point of manufacture to the point of patient implant or use.

The platform is a cross-enterprise real-time SaaS solution shared between medical device suppliers and healthcare providers. It incorporates a distributed network of high-accuracy RFID data collection nodes and mobile devices throughout the supply chain. The resulting shared visibility enables a collaborative system-wide optimization capability.

About the Speaker

Prior to joining WaveMark, Jean-Claude Saghbini was an architect and manager of software development at EMC, where he built an organization of 25 software developers. Before EMC, Saghbini worked on digital imaging products at Polaroid. During his tenure, he had a unique multidisciplinary role in mechanical engineering, software development, and systems integration. He was more recently involved with the inception of Fantasy Seats, a venture designed to create a futures market for sporting events.

As an alumnus of MIT’s System Design and Management (SDM) Program, Saghbini earned an MS in engineering and management from MIT. He also holds a master of science degree in mechanical engineering from MIT, and a BS in mechanical engineering from the University of Massachusetts.

About the Series

The MIT System Design and Management Program Systems Thinking Webinar Series features research conducted by SDM faculty, alumni, students, and industry partners. The series is designed to disseminate information on how to employ systems thinking to address engineering, management, and socio-political components of complex challenges.