Healthcare build projects: Has AI killed the approved supplier list?

There was a time when getting onto a hospital trust's or medical device buyer's approved supplier list was critical, and once you were on it, you tended to stay there. However, Paul Houston, co-founder of Catalyst Marketing Agency, argues that's no longer guaranteed. Here, he explains why AI-assisted research is rebuilding healthcare procurement shortlists from scratch, and what that means for manufacturers and contractors who supply the sector.

I've spent more than two decades working within, or with manufacturers and contractors across the UK, and a good chunk of that has been spent inside the healthcare supply chain. So it’s no surprise I’ve talked to a lot of medical device makers, clinical equipment manufacturers, and estates and facilities contractors in that time, all bidding into NHS frameworks.

The holy grail would be to find yourself on the approved suppliers’ list, get onto a trust's procurement framework, and then build relationships with the right category manager. And by doing so, you massively improved your chances of many years’ repeat business. It wasn’t the only way to win business, but it was definitely the goal of every supplier.

The changing model

Fast forward to today, and the model is changing. Not gradually over the past 10, 15 or 20 years, but rapidly over the past five. And it’s still changing, faster than most of the sector has clocked and because it’s largely driven by AI, it’s evolving on the job.

The reason is that procurement managers, heads of estates, and clinical buyers are increasingly opening ChatGPT before they open Google, rather than picking up the phone or visiting a website. And the approved supplier lists that companies spent decades building their way onto are being completely rebuilt by AI-assisted research. ChatGPT alone now gets around 5.6 billion visits a month, and over 71% of people now use the available suite of AI tools to search.

This is happening across pretty much every sector we work with, but there seems to be added pressure on buyers in healthcare and the NHS, which impacts this further - most probably because sourcing decisions in this sector carry a heavy weight. Whether it's PPE, sterilisation equipment, diagnostic devices or a contractor for a ward refurbishment, buyers can be weighed down by compliance, red tape and, naturally, budgets. This makes them a prime candidate for AI, given it’s quick, easy and efficient to ask: “Suggest five UK manufacturers of walking aids who are ISO 13485 certified and have experience supplying NHS trusts.”

And hey presto, an instant shortlist, and guess what, there’s also no need to click through to a supplier's website. Across search more broadly, 60% of Google searches now end without anyone clicking through to a site at all. In healthcare procurement, where buyers are time-poor and risk-averse, I'd expect that number to be even higher.

As buyers and consumers, the rise of AI search over the past few years has taught us we can ask a question and get a pretty accurate answer. Previously, it would direct us, and we would still have to do a lot of the heavy lifting.

An optimised website is no longer all you need

What has become apparent during this change, is that a Google ranking and an optimised website no longer guarantee you're making that shortlist. AI tools aren't ranking pages, they're gathering content they can find, understand and trust - and giving you an answer. If your case studies, accreditations, clinical evidence, and thought leadership aren't structured in a way that's easy for an AI model to extract and cite, you simply won't be mentioned.

It doesn't matter how good your relationship with the outgoing category manager was, or how long you've been on the framework, lists are being rebuilt by a machine that has never met you or your sales team. 

But we are now seeing suppliers in this space doing things a bit differently? First, they're treating their credentials as content, and making it work harder. Accreditations, case studies,  and trial data are being repurposed and clearly visible on their websites, in language that answers the exact questions a buyer or an AI tool would ask.

Secondly, AI tools look for credibility from outside your own website - such as industry press, trade bodies, and review platforms - so being mentioned and linked to by trusted sources in the healthcare and manufacturing press carries more weight now than it did five years ago. It’s one of the key reasons why digital PR campaigns are on the rise, and working hand in hand with search, or generative engine optimisation (GEO) teams.

Finally, they're keeping content current, because news about a framework win from 2020 or a case study that hasn't been updated since before the pandemic is stale to both buyers and AI. Web presence is something that needs to be fluid rather than built and forgotten. 

None of this means relationship building is no longer important, nor should we stop networking with people who buy and influence, we just need to understand that AI is bypassing this, and there’s something we can do about it. Our own research into how search and procurement behaviour is shifting backs this up, and we see it across every single sector we work in.

So, has AI killed the approved supplier list? Not quite, but it’s changing the rules on how we get there. We still need to be trusted, but by machines as well as humans.