New Zealand’s Health Benefits Limited (HBL) facilitates and leads non-clinical initiatives that result in savings and efficiencies for District Health Boards (DHBs). One of HBL’s key business objectives is driving the development of a District Health Board National Catalogue (DHBNC) to provide accurate product data for District Health Boards and businesses who supply the healthcare sector. The DHBNC will ultimately allow all DHB product purchasing to be performed using one platform, using GS1 global standards. It is part of planned changes to the way DHBs buy products and services. These changes are designed to allow the sector to order more efficiently and manage stock more effectively, leading to improved patient safety.
The efficiency and effectiveness of all processes, from planning to manufacturing, distribution and patient care are driven from quality master data. Data synchronisation through GS1net will improve the quality of data across the entire supply chain, driving benefits to both suppliers and DHBs. The benefits for suppliers in building and maintaining a catalogue include:
- a one-stop shop for product data to the healthcare sector with current, accurate and standardised information used across the entire supply chain
- one standardised way of providing and managing item and price data for all DHBs
- improved visibility and reach for products
- significantly reduced time and cost to introduce new products to the sector
- reduction in order errors and supply costs associated with invoice reconciliation, credit claims, refused deliveries and a reduction in invoice holds.
The DHBNC will create savings opportunities for both suppliers and the sector. It is part of an overall Finance, Procurement and Supply Chain program aimed at delivering substantial benefits to the health sector in New Zealand, with any savings from the work HBL does with DHBs available for spending elsewhere in the healthcare sector.
Bizcaps has extensive experience in the healthcare sector. Bizcaps is an alliance partner of GS1 in both Australia and New Zealand and Bizcaps DataSync and Bizcaps Enterprise product data management software simplifies the publishing of product information to GDSN-compliant datapools such as the NPC (National Product Catalogue) in Australia and the DHBNC in NZ.