26th April 2012

Healthcare procurement website aims to become ‘the Amazon of the medical marketplace’

Owners of a healthcare procurement website that aims to become ‘the Amazon of the medical marketplace’ claim they could save the NHS more than £30m overnight through improvements in purchasing.

Medical Supermarket was launched to act as a portal for the procurement of common medical devices and equipment.

Through bulk buying, and testing the market for best price, the website aims to save NHS and private health trusts millions of pounds that can be ploughed back into frontline services.

Speaking to Building Better Healthcare , Udhi Silva, who set the company up with his partner, Nick Coleman, said: “Our mission is to improve world health by creating a place for healthcare companies to unite and trade as one. We believe that if local surgeries and community services worked with us, we could save the NHS around £30m overnight.”

The website has 60,000 available products aimed at a number of medical markets including primary care, secondary care, optometry, dental, physiotherapy, care and nursing homes and pharmacies. These include care beds, bathroom hygiene equipment, incontinence pads, workwear, drugs, anaesthetic products, blood pressure monitoring equipment, and respiratory devices.

Silva said: “We take the burden of searching the marketplace away from purchasing managers. They just have to come through us as a single portal. It’s like an Amazon for healthcare; a one-stop shop. We network with the right suppliers to bring the right solutions for their businesses and, with a customer as big as the NHS, there is the potential for huge savings if trusts unite and trade as one.”

The site has also taken measures to streamline the invoicing process, so just one invoice is created for each transaction, regardless of the number of different products purchased and the number of different providers.

Click here to read more of this article at www.buildingbetterhealthcare.co.uk