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The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant and worldwide influence on healthcare delivery, and it has significantly increased the pace at which digital technology is being used. Blockchain, one of these developing digital technologies, is distinguished by a number of properties. This study focuses on a blockchain-enabled healthcare supply chain. The purpose of this work is to investigate how blockchain technology (BCT) benefits the performance of healthcare supply chain management (HSCM).

The present study is based on the empirical research. Blockchain Technology (BCT), Healthcare Sustainable Supply Chain Practices (HSSCP), Healthcare Supply Chain Performance (HSCP) and Stakeholders’ Involvement (SI) practices are identified from the literature review and hypotheses are framed to check their interrelationship. For testing of hypothesis, a questionnaire was developed. Data collection was done by healthcare professionals via Google docs. The IBM SPSS version 22.0 was used to analyze the data and IBM SPSS AMOS 22.0 software was used for the development of structural modal. The data was collected through the Google form from the stakeholders of healthcare sector and analyzed through Structural Equation Modelling.

This research is focused on adoption of BCT enabled Healthcare Sustainable Supply Chain to improve HSCP. From the result, it had been found that BCT is positively effecting the stakeholder's involvement (SI) and HSSCP practices. Cumulatively, they positively impact the performance of HSCP. From this study, it is found that adoption of BCT enabled Healthcare Sustainable Supply Chain succours to combat COVID-19 situation.

This study attempts to show the potential benefits of the adoption of BCT enabled HSSCP to improve HSCP.

This study develops and tests a model exploring the relationship between supply chain (SC) counterfeit risk management and performance in the healthcare supply chain (HCSC).

In the proposed theoretical model, HCSC counterfeit risk management is characterized by HCSC counterfeit risk orientation (HCRO), HCSC counterfeit risk mitigation (HCRM) and HCSC risk management integration (HRMI), while performance is represented by healthcare logistics performance (HLP) and healthcare organization overall performance (HOP). Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) and survey data from 55 HCSC managers are used to test the research hypotheses.

HCRO has a significant positive effect on HCRM, while HCRM has a positive impact on HRMI. With respect to HLP, HCRM has a nonsignificant effect, while HRMI has a significant impact, thus confirming the important mediating role of HRMI. Finally, HLP has a significant positive effect on the overall performance of healthcare organizations.

All study participants were from the United States, limiting the generalizability of the study findings to different countries or regions. The sample size employed in the study did not allow the authors to distinguish among the different types of healthcare organizations.

This study delineates between a healthcare organization's philosophy toward counterfeiting risks vs actions taken to eliminate or reduce the impact of counterfeiting on the HCSC. By offering firm-level guidance for managers, this study informs healthcare organizations about addressing the challenge of counterfeiting in the HCSC.

The relevance of analytics to the healthcare supply chain is increasing with emerging trends and technologies. This study examines how analytics are used in the healthcare supply chain in the “new normal” environment.

A systematic literature review was conducted by extracting research articles related to analytics in the healthcare supply chain from Scopus. The author used a hybrid review approach that combines bibliometric analysis with a theories, contexts, characteristics, and methodology (TCCM) framework-based review to identify various themes of analytics in the healthcare supply chain.

The hybrid review strategy yielded results that focus on prevalent theories, contexts, characteristics, and methodologies in the field of healthcare supply chain analytics. Future research should explore the resulting antecedents, decision-making processes and outcomes (ADO) framework, which integrates technological, economic, and societal concerns and outcomes. Future research agendas could also seek to apply theoretical perspectives in the field of analytics in the healthcare supply chain.

The result of a review of selected studies adds to the current body of work and contributes to the growth of research in the field of analytics in the healthcare supply chain. It also provides new directions to healthcare supply chain managers and academic scholars.

This paper aims to explore the drivers of sustainable healthcare supply chain (SHCSC) performance measurement through extensive literature review and experts' opinions. The drivers are then scrutinized and their priority vector is calculated to provide quality and cost-effective healthcare supply chain (HCSC) services.

The drivers of the SHCSC performance measurement are validated using the grey-Delphi technique. After validating the drivers, they are prioritized using the grey-analytic hierarchy process (G-AHP), a multi-criteria decision-making tool.

The findings of the study highlight the prioritized drivers based on the preferences given by the experts. The findings of the study highlight the most prioritized drivers of healthcare (HC) by-product management system, coordinating and facilitating green suppliers in the HCSC and green packaging of pharmaceutical as well as other essential items.

The HCSC managers should coordinate with all the stakeholders across the supply chain and involve them in the decision-making process to make products and services greener and become complicit in complying with the sustainable policy guidelines. The study highlights the strategic policy and managerial implications for implementing sustainability in the HCSC.

The validation and prioritization of the drivers of SHCSC in developing nations' contexts is the key contribution of the study. Grey-AHP enables a practical approach towards enhancing the sustainability of the HCSC and opening the doors for generalizing the study for future research works.

Idea of circular economy defies the classical “make-use-dispose” approach of linear economic model. In the context of health-care industry, it relies heavily on the supply chain practices implemented by industry stakeholders. The purpose of this study is to explore such relationships, study their structure and put it across for attaining sustainability at large.

This study is an empirical research conducted on 145 health-care firms. The collected data is analysed to develop structural and measurement model. The five constructed hypotheses are examined and tested through structural equation modelling.

The study illustrates the latent relationships that exist among the stakeholders involvement, sustainable supply chain practices, sustainable performance and circular economy for health-care industry. It is found that the adoption of sustainable supply chain practices improves health-care performance, which, in turn, have positive influence on circular economy.

The structural and measurement model is developed in the context of circular health-care economy. It can be validated or improvised by conducting similar research in other industry using different methods. This research work fulfils the long existing gap in research by offering a linkage between various constructs to achieve health-care circular economy. Based on the research results, future researchers can build theories of circular economy and sustainability for health-care industry.

The study attempts to study the supply chain ways to achieve circular economy for Indian health-care sector. It considered latent relationships among the set of constructs, which are needed for theory building at later stage.

Diabetes is one of the major healthcare challenges in India. The chronic nature of the disease makes the lifetime cost of the treatment exorbitantly high. The medicine cost contributes a major size of expense in diabetes management. To make healthcare available to poorest of the poor, it is imperative to control the rising cost of diabetes treatment. The earlier research works done in this area focuses more on inventory management techniques to control the cost of healthcare. Less interest is shown in the role of better supply chain partnership (SCP) in reducing the cost of procurement of medicine. The purpose of this paper is to develop and use the SCP assessment framework for a diabetes clinic. The approach is generalized enough to be adopted for other similar organization.

This paper adopts self-assessment criteria of the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) business excellence model for analysis of SCP in the supply chain of a private diabetes clinic in Varanasi. The paper uses analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method for calculation of weights of criteria.

The EFQM-based framework can be adopted as easy-to-use tool to make an objective assessment of the SCP. The proposed model in the study is a balanced model between enablers and results, which includes multiple assessment dimensions. The supply chain performance score of the diabetes clinic under study was found as the Tool Pusher, which means the effort in direction of SCP is not too good. The organization needs to clearly define the SCP goal and analyze the results to identify the gap areas.

The study is first of its kind and contributes to the literature by providing non-prescriptive and easy-to-use SCP assessment framework, for chronic disease care. The case study approach provides a procedure for the healthcare organization willing to adopt this approach.

Health-care supply chains must focus on efficient deployment of resources for ensuring optimal supply chain performance. With efficient supply chain (SC) performance, health-care entities would be able to address their patients’ requirements with great speed. This is the essence of health-care agility. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to focus on developing health-care agility through human capital, that is, innovative idea generation capabilities and specialised knowledge possessed by the firm employees. Because information technology (IT) capabilities play a dominant role in information exchange crucial to supply chain operations; the study considered the moderating role of three IT capabilities, viz. outside-in, spanning and inside-out IT capabilities on human capital and health-care SC performance association, and on health-care supply chain performance and health-care agility association.

Because the constructs used in the study mainly deals with issues specifically related to hospitals and their associated supply chains, the study collected perceptual responses from senior hospital managers. Perceptual responses were received through face-to-face interviews with 212 hospital managers working in different hospitals. The collected responses were analysed using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling.

Findings suggests positive influences of human capital on health-care SC performance and health-care agility. Furthermore, health-care SC performance was also found to result in enhanced health-care agility. The study further revealed positive moderation of outside-in, spanning and inside-out IT capabilities on human capital and health-care SC performance association and on health-care SC performance and health-care agility association.

The study addressed the importance of human capital in providing faster services to patients (i.e. agility) in health-care supply chains through improved SC performance. Furthermore, the study addressed the importance of different IT capabilities that enhance the importance of human capital in providing efficient and faster services through efficient SC performance.

Healthcare supply chains (HCSCs) face severe challenges when compared to regular chains. Besides avoiding bankruptcy, they must accomplish their goal which is to save lives. Since 2019 the COVID-19 pandemic evidenced that a HCSC disruption generates disruptions to other SCs. Therefore, the objective of this paper is threefold: conduct a systematic literature review to build a HCSC operational excellence (HSCOE) definition; build a conceptual framework by mapping the antecedents of HSCOE and formulate hypotheses; test the hypotheses using a fuzzy-Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) combined with partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) techniques to obtain empirical validation.

Given this context, this paper conducted a systematic literature review to build a HSCOE conceptual framework and used a fsQCA combined with PLS-SEM techniques to obtain empirical validation.

The paper revealed a relationship between important variables to achieve HSCOE, such as Supply chain 4.0, SC risk management, SC integration, SC resilience (antecedents) and HSCOE (consequent).

The literature contributions of this paper are as follows: validating a new scale for each of the constructs; finding evidence of the causal relationships between the latent variables; measuring how the constructs influence the HSCOE; in addition, the results address important literature gaps identified by researchers and serve as a guide to organizations that need to implement these practices. Furthermore, this study recommends that HCSC managers consider the implementation of robust initiatives concerning the latent variables presented in this work.

The purpose of this paper is to refine and expand technology adoption theory for a healthcare logistics setting by combining the technology–organization–environment framework with a business process management (BPM) perspective. The paper identifies and ranks factors impacting the decision to implement instances of technologies in healthcare logistics processes.

A multiple case study is carried out at five Danish hospitals to investigate the bed logistics process. A combined technology adoption and BPM lens is applied to gain an understanding of the reasoning behind technology adoption.

A set of 17 factors impacting the adoption of technologies within healthcare logistics was identified. The impact factors perceived as most important to the adoption of technologies in healthcare logistics processes relate to quality, employee work conditions and employee engagement.

This paper seeks to understand how managers can use knowledge about impact factors to improve processes through technology adoption. The findings of this study provide insights about the factors impacting the adoption of technologies in healthcare logistics processes. Differences in perceived importance of factors enable ranking of impact factors, and prioritization of changes to be implemented. The study is limited to five hospitals, but is expected to be representative of public hospitals in developed countries and applicable to similar processes.

The study contributes to the empirical research within the field of BPM and technology adoption in healthcare. Furthermore, the findings of this study enable managers to make an informed decision about technology adoption within a healthcare logistics setting.

Previous studies on hospital supply chain performance have attempted to measure the performance of the hospital supply chain either by the measurement of performance indicators or the performance of specific activities. This paper attempts to measure the internal hospital supply chain's performance indicators to find their interdependencies to understand the relationship among them and identify the key performance indicators for each of those aspects of the logistics process toward improvement.

In this research, a systematic assessment and analysis method under vagueness is proposed to assess, analyze and measure the internal health care performance aspects (HCPA). The proposed method combines the group Decision-Making and Trial Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) method and rough set theory.

The study results indicate that the most critical aspects of hospital supply chain performance are completeness of treatment, clinical care process time and no delay in treatment.

The causal relationship from rough-DEMATEL can advise management officials that to improve the completeness of treatment toward patient safety, clinical care process time should be addressed initially and with it, patient safety aspects such as free from error, clinical care productivity, etc. should be improved as well. Improvement of these aspects will improve the other aspects they are related to.