Medline, Microsoft to build AI tool to prevent supply chain disruptions

Between the Covid-19 pandemic and worsening natural disasters, the healthcare industry is no stranger to supply chain issues.

Microsoft and Medline Industries, an Illinois-based medical manufacturing and supply company, are teaming up to fight the problem. Together, they are developing an artificial intelligence (AI) “ healthcare supply chain resiliency solution” called Mpower.

“The potential for AI to help alleviate the burden on healthcare professionals is immense, and together with Medline we’re helping to address a unique piece of this puzzle—the healthcare supply chain,” Deb Cupp, president of Microsoft Americas, said in a release last week.

Mpower is designed to pull customer and supplier data that will help the tech predict supply chain operations and give suggestions to supply chain professionals, making “complicated inventory management workflows easier,” according to the release.

The program runs on the cloud-based Microsoft 365 using Copilot in Azure AI, the tech giant’s service with natural language processing, or NPL, text analysis capabilities. The companies said using this existing secure platform will make it easier to implement, as many workers are likely already familiar with the tools.

“By combining capabilities of our Copilot and AI offerings with Medline’s proven expertise across supply chain resilience and clinical solutions, we will be able to significantly reduce complexity and give providers time back to focus on patient care,” Cupp added in the release.