Electronic Business: Has Its Time Come for Healthcare?

Originally Published June 2000

Cliff Henke

A few years ago, several large manufacturers and distributors along with a major industry organization teamed with their customers to research whether efficient supply-chain management tools should be applied to the healthcare technology marketplace. The researchers agreed that they should, but the effort languished as participating organizations and companies couldn't agree on what the next step should be or how it would be funded and managed.

Today, ironically, many of the same companies are now joining industry e-business consortia or launching such services on their own, reversing their decision to table the initiative they participated in only a few months before.