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.”
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