Duesseldorf, Germany - 1 December 2010

Foreword David Kerr

As the days get shorter, an almost automatic mechanism seems to set in for most of us: This is the time, when everyone is beginning to reflect about their achievements of the past year. And, more importantly, where do we go next? What is in store for us in the coming 12 months? What can we do to drive our business forward? We at GHX are looking forward to an exciting new year. Our key objective is to maximise the benefits for our customers and to make sure we increase the value we deliver to the healthcare supply chain.

To this effect we will be stepping up our engagement with our customers. Only “up close and personal” do we get a solid understanding of established processes. Only in talking to the people who are involved can we determine where there is an opportunity to increase efficiencies. In addition to growing our team to ensure the truly personal approach, next year will also see our portfolio of products and services expand. It may have taken a while, but many organisations both on provider and supplier side have come to the realisation that there are substantial benefits to be gained in their processes. We at GHX are certain that the healthcare supply chain is getting ready for a step change. With the number of partners trading through our Exchange growing significantly, we are convinced that next year the industry will get noticeably closer to the Tipping Point, the point when efficient electronic communication around a transaction will become the norm instead of the vision for a select few. 2011 is going to be an exciting year!

Healthcare live! Conference in Dresden Demonstrates eCommerce in Action

End of October was a key date for the healthcare supply chain in German speaking countries: The conference Healthcare live!, jointly hosted by GHX Europe and GS1 Germany, took place at the Carl Gustav Carus university clinic of Dresden. With 250 participants in attendance, almost equally from providers and suppliers, the conference was a huge success. Spread over two days, the programme focused on actual implementations and best practice examples, as opposed to visionary messages. Striking a balance between standardisation and process automation topics and speakers, the subject matter provided food for thought for the supply chain specialists, financial decision makers and eCommerce principals attending the conference.

The conference programme truly came live! during the guided tours kindly arranged by the team at the university clinic. Taking the participants behind the scenes of the university clinic and its pharmacy, these tours provided a fascinating opportunity to see finely tuned supply chain and purchasing processes in action.

GHX supports newly created shared service centre in the Netherlands

ZXL - Zorgservice XL is the first shared service centre in the Netherlands to bundle procurement, logistics and financial services for three Dutch hospitals. ZXL is planning on spending an approximate 200 M€ annually on goods and services, expecting to save up to 10 M€ in the next 5 years on the cumulative purchasing volume under their control. Bundling expertise and purchasing volumes, the integration of logistics and digital order and invoice processing, are the cornerstones of ZXL’s strategy to achieve these goals.

To implement an efficient procure-to-pay process, ZXL has now selected the services from GHX Benelux. GHX provides both content management and electronic order distribution services for a number of suppliers to ZXL. The 1500 users of the three hospitals can order from ZXL specific supplier catalogues resulting in “the perfect order” and thus less invoice discrepancies. In addition, the combined catalogues ensure a reduction of internal article management and fewer non-catalogue purchasing requests that need to be handled by the purchasing department.

Schulthess Clinic in Zurich to launch GHX Content Management System

As of December 2010 the Schulthess Clinic in Zurich, Switzerland, is working with the GHX content management system EPS. With EPS - Electronic Procurement System - GHX establishes a standardized electronic ERP system in the leading Swiss clinic for orthopedics. The use of EPS enables Schulthess clinic to electronically manage its pricing and product information. This means that the Schulthess hospitals as well as their suppliers can centrally adjust product catalogues and contract data and make evaluations at any time. EPS has been set up to work like a web shop. With only one click the hospital can access more than 180 European supplier product catalogues, including specific product information and prices. EPS contains a search function for article numbers, hit lists can be generated and work cycles can be saved. The cooperation with GHX once more emphasizes how an improved data interchange can boost the efficiency in hospital management and aims at becoming a strategic competitive advantage for Schulthess clinic in the Swiss healthcare market.

Welcome on board!

With a view to strengthening the relationship with our customers, GHX has decided to grow its team, especially by increasing the number of quality customer touch points. First new member of the team in the UK is Richard Eltze who is focused on the southern part of the country. We also welcome Frank Gottwald, as the new Director Provider Key Accounts in Germany. The two will be engaged in delivering value to existing and new customers, while driving overall customer satisfaction.

Thirst for accurate data multiplies

The volume of product searches initiated by hospital users has almost tripled in a period of only 12 months. In the UK, medical staff on the ward as well as the trusts’ purchasing experts have used GHX Nexus for 373,000 product searches in the month of October 2010 alone, an increase of 276% as opposed to the previous October. Jason Hale, Managing Director for GHX in the UK, sees a changing approach to data content as the reason for the widespread uptake of the Nexus search functionalities: “The average time this year for search results to be displayed is only 0.17 seconds. Searching within local as well as remote catalogues has become so comfortable that purchasing managers are quite simply extending their reach far beyond their own catalogues.” With GHX Nexus functionality in many instances deeply integrated into materials management systems, the buyer often does not even realise they are leaving their local system.

New features for GHX Nexus

With currently more than 12,500 provider item master catalogues being held in the UK alone, GHX Nexus is a powerful tool for trading partners in the healthcare supply chain to cooperatively manage their content. In an effort to continuously develop and improve the functionalities of Nexus, GHX will be introducing a new feature, which allows providers to approve price changes in advance of their effective start date. The approved changes will be queued so that they only become active on a date that has been synchronised with the supplier. This new features, to be launched in December 2010, will reduce the number of invoice matching queries that occur as a consequence of list price changes, which subsequently also impact previously agreed discounts.

GHX customers are recognised by Gartner

Thirteen of the 14 medical-surgical organisations named in the 2010 Gartner “Healthcare Supply Chain Top 25” list partner with GHX to advance their supply chain strategies, helping them to improve business results. By automating supply chain processes and combining disparate sources of supply chain data into a single, holistic information set, these provider and supplier organisations recognise the connection between supply chain effectiveness and better patient care.

The list, released annually by the IT research and advisory firm, ranks companies on their pursuit of “high-quality patient care at optimal economic cost, which is our definition of ‘value’ in healthcare,” according to Gartner’s research report. Among the winners announced 17 November at the Gartner Healthcare Exchange 2010 in Boston were:

• Owens & Minor
• Johnson & Johnson
• Sisters of Mercy Health System
• BD (Becton, Dickinson and Company)
• Intermountain Healthcare
• Mayo Clinic
• Abbott
• AmerisourceBergen Corporation
• BJC HealthCare
• Boston Scientific
• Fresenius Medical Care
• Alcon

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