6 Rules For Using AI In The Supply Chain: Becker’s Panel

In July 2026, McKinsey released a survey of more than 100 health system supply chain executives in a report titled, “Powering Up Procurement: AI In Healthcare Supply Chains.” The results of the survey confirm what our team at Clarium team has been advocating for since we’ve started.

The takeaway is clear: ROI isn’t a nice to have, it’s a must have. AI platforms and tools must deliver a sizable return on investment in the next three years. Health system supply chain executives have spoken, and they’re ready to get their money’s worth. 

Here are some of the key stats from the McKinsey report:

• 65% of respondents expect significant (5-10%) cost savings from AI within the next three years; 26% expect transformational (greater than 10%) savings.  
• 46% of those using AI in the supply chain have already doubled their ROI while another 20% have seen smaller gains. 
• 75% of respondents say their organizations have a dedicated budget for investing in AI for supply chain.
• Overall, 85% of organizations are pursuing AI adoption in the healthcare supply chain.

Health system leaders ranked the top areas where AI had the greatest potential in the supply chain to generate returns. It’s no surprise that it aligns with the key areas where Clarium has focused its development efforts: supplier performance management and transparency, supply-demand forecasting and predictive analytics, and inventory management.

The McKinsey report had a few more stats that caught my eye: 

• 44% say their organizations lacks a clear business case for AI adoption in the supply chain.
• 42% say the most beneficial AI are agents that could proactively anticipate needs and make decisions semi-autonomously, after learning from past behavior. This is in line with what our customers are asking of us. I’d expect that number to be even higher in next year’s report.
• 76% of respondents said data privacy and regulatory compliance has slowed the pace of adoption of AI in the supply chain.

To those of us who have been working on delivering outcomes and cost savings for health systems, this report was incredibly validating.

Here are four pieces of advice to health system leaders that are still figuring this out: 

1. Demand that vendors show measurable ROI within a predefined window, and walk away from anyone who won't commit to those results.
2. Focus on the companies that have built deep, trusted relationships with your peers, and also have real-world case studies to back up their claims. Word of mouth goes a long way in healthcare for a reason.
3. Fix your data before you deploy AI. Every health system is under pressure to have an AI strategy, but AI on top of dirty, fragmented data only produces expensive noise faster.
4. Elevate supply chain to a strategic function. Amazon and Walmart treat supply chain as a competitive advantage, while some health systems still treat the function as a back office function. CEOs should give their supply chain leader a real seat and voice at the executive table.

Clarium Strategic Advisor, Eric O'Daffer, recently posted a blog, "Healthcare CFO: Show me the Money!”, about the value that supply chain can bring for health system chief financial officers looking for cost savings. At a time when supply chain executives at health systems are facing unprecedented headwinds, O’Daffer argues that CFOs would be wise to empower these leaders and invest in AI to manage spend.

Here’s an excerpt:

As implied in the classic demand “Show me the money!” in the film Jerry Maguire, there is a massive financial opportunity to demonstrate value waiting inside your organization. I encourage you — the health system CFO — to engage with your supply chain leadership team in a deeper strategic alliance to drive these results. Your team possesses the technical know-how to deliver savings, but they need your passionate leadership, backing, and a willingness to give them the strategic support required to get the job done.

Being a CFO of a health system is an incredibly demanding job. Balancing shifting reimbursement models, uncompensated care, and the iary pressures of keeping a low-margin, vital caregiving engine humming is a monumental task. Currently, nearly 60% of CFOs have supply chain reporting directly to them, which gives their supply chain teams a unique opportunity to align with the CFO’s vision now more than ever. However, it is vital to look closely at a recent trend: health systems are reducing supply chain title, scope, and compensation while making leadership transitions without a seamless succession plan. My insights here are intended to provide a candid look at the market gained from talking with 75 chief supply chain officers (CSCOs) at large, leading health systems over the past 12 months. I come with collaborative solutions, not just an analysis of the challenges.

Supply chain leadership is facing unprecedented headwinds at a growing number of health systems in the U.S. With roles being restructured, positions being shifted down the org chart, and capital investments being paused, many health systems are inadvertently losing momentum at the exact moment they should be accelerating supply chain support to drive financial returns. This is especially true in the area of indirect spend management/purchased services where trusted relationships, governance, and continuity are most important for enacting change and delivering value.

Chief supply chain officer roles that once reported to the C-suite are being shifted to VP roles reporting downline. This can inadvertently result in a fractured hiring strategy, gaps in development, and a lack of long-term succession planning. Furthermore, there is a wide disparity in compensation across the country, with some systems investing over a million dollars for top-tier enterprise roles while others budget a quarter of that for similar responsibilities.

Over 40% of the 75 leaders of large, mature healthcare provider supply chains I’ve talked to in the past year have been in their roles for less than three years; nearly 25% have been there for less than one year. It is incredibly difficult to reach that stable cruising altitude when health systems are forced to frequently change pilots.

When organizations downsize supply chain leadership roles, it suggests the supply chain is still being viewed through the legacy lens as a "product availability" or “contract price negotiation” function, rather than as a powerful strategic lever for cost optimization and enabling improved clinical care.

Fortunately, this isn't happening everywhere. I see highly encouraging progress in specific pockets, but this concerning trend is creating a widening chasm between the systems that proactively invest in supply chain excellence and those that defer it.

AI can provide value

CFOs, you need to commit to the strategic function that impacts 40% of your operating cost. Move beyond the traditional "VP of procurement" mindset and elevate or maintain a dedicated CSCO role. According to the Health Management Academy, supply chain is currently ranked 10th out of 15 categories for CFO investment priorities in 2026. Elevating its priority on your list allows you to invest in the specialized talent and technology required to drive transformational service improvements.

When it comes to AI, healthcare supply chain has historically taken a cautious, "prove it to me" approach to new technology. However, while healthcare waits, a massive wave of innovation and investment is flowing into AI-driven supply chain solutions in other sectors.

For CFOs and supply chain leaders, I encourage you to get off the sidelines and actively explore how partnering with AI platform innovators can support your fiscal goals both in managing supplier spend and in reducing your total cost of supply chain staff by augmenting with AI workforce solutions.

This text has been condensed and repurposed for Clarium by Gabe Perna.

One of the biggest conferences in the healthcare supply chain world is in the books.

Industry trade group Association for Health Care Resource & Materials Management (AHRMM), of the American Hospital Association, held its annual conference this week from July 26-28, 2026 in San Antonio, Texas. The event brought together more than 1,000 health system supply chain professionals as well as vendors, suppliers, distributors and other key stakeholders.

Amid the education sessions, keynote addresses and countless conversations on the exhibit floor, five themes emerged from this year’s show.

Here’s a rundown:

1. Supply chain has gone from the back office to the board agenda.

For a long time, supply chain was relegated to the health system’s proverbial basement and seen as a back office function. No more!

Stephen Downey, Chief Supply Chain and Support Services Officer at Cleveland Clinic, kicked off AHRMM 2026 by declaring that the supply chain in health systems has gone from the back office to being on the board’s agenda.

“We’re not going back,” Downey said.

This is the most consequential generation of supply chain leaders that the profession has ever produced, Downey said, setting the tone for the rest of the show. Every health system needs to empower its supply chain to find savings at a time when health systems are facing unprecedented margin pressures, he said.

2. Clean data is a must have for automation.

As health systems start to deploy agentic AI, they don’t want to accelerate the speed of bad information. In order for automation to work correctly, data needs to be unified and cleaned.

This was a recurring theme heard from several speakers at AHRMM 2026. During various panels throughout the event, supply chain and tech leaders at Cleveland Clinic, Kaiser Permanente, Ochsner Health and St. Luke’s Health all talked about the importance of data integration and integrity.

The data cleaning process can be frustrating as it may mean delaying a go live of a critical system. But this is important as small data irregularities in the ERP and other systems can compound into bigger problems without the right data foundation, said René Gurdián Jr., Vice President of SCM Data Analytics and Transformation at Ochsner Health.

3. Health systems, own your data.

Understanding the importance of data cleaning and unification is part of a larger need for health systems to establish comprehensive data governance protocols. Steven Chyung, Chief Supply Chain Officer at Kaiser Permanente, said his organization is creating governance councils across multiple areas of the health system that are interacting with AI, including clinical, administrative and patient-facing technologies.

Part of data governance is the recognition that the health system itself knows best how to operationalize its own data, rather than vendors, consultants or suppliers.

“We need to be owners of our data,” Gurdián said. “When we talk about this AI world, in order for us to talk about AI, the prerequisite of AI is data governance. We have leaned heavily on the creation and curation of a data governance team that helped us prepare for migration of an ERP conversion.”

4. There is an ROI to resiliency.

With margin pressures on the minds of every health system executive, those championing AI tools in their organization are feeling the pressure to prove the value of those investments.

In the supply chain, panelists at AHRMM said leaders should be ready to speak the language of their audience. In terms of ROI, they should be able to inform others within the organization how the AI tools they use within the supply chain leads to cost savings.

There is an ROI to using AI for supply chain resiliency, said Amanda Chawla, Chief Supply Chain Officer and Post Acute Care Officer at Stanford Health Care (who recently took a job with Providence).

Chawla used the example of a recent fire at one of Stanford’s supplier’s warehouses on how to show the ROI for AI-based resiliency tools. Stanford’s investment into AI for resiliency meant the health system was able to fill critical orders from other warehouses and not have patient care disrupted at all, she said.

5. Supply chain leaders must speak multiple languages.

As the supply chain grows in prominence, leaders can’t stick to their supply chain silos. The supply chain isn’t just a single job, it’s a portfolio of specializations, said Downey.

Supply chain leaders must speak three languages to run an effective operation, Gurdián said. They have to speak financial and income statements; supply chain category and contracts; and clinical utilization and consumptions.

“You need to be amazing at all three languages,” Gurdián said. “You’re amazing at a million things, so what’s three more languages?”

Bonus: The conference highlighted the excitement happening in hospital supply chains. There is a record number of emerging technologies in the sector. Companies focused on clean data and AI-enabled insights layered on top of existing workflows are the ones that seem to be standing out.