MHI Solutions Improving Supply Chain Performance
EVEN IN A time marked by disruption and complexity across all supply chains, pharmaceutical and health care supply chains face a notable array of challenges.
“Supply chains remain fragile, vendor solvency risk and product shortages continue, costs are increasing and resiliency is a must,” Christy Christian, senior industry principal at Kinaxis, said. “Disruptions are the norm, and they are coming faster and with more magnitude, introducing more risk and greater urgency for adaptability.”
Perry Fri, chief industry relations officer and president of the HDA Research Foundation, noted that the pharmaceutical supply chain is among the most reliable and tightly regulated industries in the United States. The field is characterized today by policy uncertainty, global trade considerations and a rapidly evolving therapeutic landscape, most notably in specialty, cold‑chain and cell and gene therapies, he said.
Experts from the field shared their insights on the chief challenges and trends shaping the industry today.
DISRUPTION BECOMES THE NORM
Dan Kistner, senior vice president and chief clinical solutions officer for Vizient, said that the defining characteristic of today’s health care and pharmaceutical supply chain is that disruption is no longer merely episodic —it’s structural.
“Drug shortages, product availability issues, geopolitical instability, tariffs and natural disasters have become ongoing operating conditions rather than exceptions,” Kistner said. “At the same time, financial pressure from site‑neutral payments, margin compression and care migration is intensifying. What distinguishes the current landscape is the degree of interdependence: pharmacy and supply chain decisions increasingly affect not just costs but also access, quality and revenue performance. Success now depends on coordination, resilience and enterprise‑level thinking rather than siloed optimization.”
Fri believes complexity and uncertainty related to new therapies, cybersecurity risks and a shifting policy environment are at the forefront for many in the field.
“Distributors are addressing this by expanding cold‑chain capacity, strengthening logistics resilience, investing in automation and data systems and collaborating closely with manufacturers, providers and pharmacies to ensure continuity of care,” Fri said.
Kistner said persistent shortages, financial pressure and increasing complexity are driven by policy, trade and market consolidation.
“Drug and product shortages strain care delivery, while reimbursement pressure and site‑neutral payments tighten margins,” Kistner said. “Tariffs and geopolitical disruptions add further instability. Leading organizations are addressing these challenges by strengthening collaboration between pharmacy and supply chain, aligning value analysis with clinical decision‑making and adopting more sophisticated analytics to understand cost drivers. Just as important, they are elevating these conversations to the enterprise level, where operational decisions align with financial and clinical strategy.”
Angie Boliver, president and CEO of the Healthcare Supply Chain Association, emphasized that recurring shortages of generic drugs, in particular, impact hospitals and patients throughout the country.
“The causes of these shortages are complex and multifaceted—the FDA identifies manufacturing quality control issues as the primary cause, as well as production delays, lack of raw materials and manufacturer business decisions to discontinue products,” Boliver said. “Another problem is the number of generic drugs that only have one manufacturer, increasing their likelihood of going short. At the same time, generic drug manufacturers face barriers to entry—hefty fees under the Generic Drug User Fee Act, costs and administrative barriers associated with investment in manufacturing, the challenge of proving bioequivalence, evolving patent issues and uncertainty of projections on price and market share.”
DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION, ADVANCED THERAPIES AND DOMESTIC MANUFACTURING
Among the major trends strengthening distribution in the field, Fri said, are continued growth in specialty medicines and advanced therapies; rapid investment in automation, predictive analytics and AI; and the industry‑wide shift to end‑to‑end traceability under the Drug Supply Chain Security Act.
“Together, these trends are pushing the supply chain to become more secure, more transparent and better able to handle complex, high‑touch products, while maintaining the speed and reliability patients rely on,” Fri said.