Kingston, MA (November 4, 2026): SMI®, a non-profit, member-driven community of healthcare provider and industry organizations, awarded Stanford Health Care and Clarium the 2026 Tom Hughes Collaboration Award at the SMI Fall 2026 Forum in Tampa, FL.
This year’s collaboration story focused on supply disruptions, from natural disasters to shortages, which can expose significant vulnerabilities in healthcare supply chain operations, highlighting the need for faster, more coordinated response. Identifying critical supply shortages typically requires days of manual tracking, spreadsheets, and cross-team coordination.
SMI members Clarium and Stanford Health Care embarked on a collaborative journey to enhance Stanford Health Care’s Command Center technology, developing six innovative features designed to enable real-time disruption monitoring, improve collaboration, and accelerate decision-making.
Steve Liou, Founder & CEO of Clarium, said, “Thank you to Stanford Health Care for working side-by-side with our teams to reimagine supply chain disruption sensing and response technology. With Stanford Health Care’s help, our 25+ health system collaborators can now work more quickly and proactively in the face of supply chain disruptions. In the spirit of Tom Hughes and his legacy of collaboration, we are proud to share our collaboration story and hope it inspires others to work together to build a stronger, more resilient future for healthcare supply chain.”
Katie Dean, Vice President, Supply Chain Strategy, Programs & Business at Stanford Health Care said, “Supply disruptions are inevitable, but we have the tools and processes to respond quickly and effectively. Despite a recent event that caused a major disruption to 95% of our supplies, we experienced zero canceled cases. This is the power of combining the right people, processes, and technology to build resilience and ensure continuity of patient care.”
The SMI Tom Hughes Collaboration Award honors the late Tom Hughes, SMI Executive Director from 2004 – 2021 who championed trading partner collaboration throughout his 40-year career in healthcare supply chain. The SMI Tom Hughes Collaboration Award, established in 2021, recognizes exceptional efforts of SMI Members collaborating to bring innovation, discovery, and improvements to the healthcare supply chain.
For more information visit: https://www.smisupplychain.com/programs/thca/
Pictured (left to right): Rahim Nazerali, MD, Clinical Associate Professor, Surgery, Stanford Medicine; Nick Trzeciak, Interim SVP – Chief Supply Chain Officer, Stanford Health Care; Victoria Tran, Resiliency Program Manager, Stanford Health Care; Katie Dean, Vice President, Supply Chain Strategy, Programs & Business, Stanford Health Care; Amanda Chawla, Chief Supply Chain Officer, Providence Health (formerly with Stanford Health Care); Steve Liou, Founder & CEO of Clarium; Meredith Sangster, Chief Customer Officer, Clarium; Mary Beth Lang, Strategic Advisory, Clarium; Shivani Stadvec, Chief Marketing Officer, Clarium; Megan Ahigan, Vice President, Product Management, Clarium
About Clarium
Clarium works with more than 25 of the nation’s top health systems, providing purpose-built applications and integrated agentic workflows, surface insights and recommendations to help hospitals reduce unnecessary spend, automate manual work, and protect continuity of care. Clarium has received industry recognition for market leadership and innovation, including Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies 2026, CB Insights Digital Health 50 2024, and CB Insights AI 100 2025.
About SMI
SMI provides a nexus for healthcare providers, suppliers, and distributors to network and collaborate on innovations that drive meaningful improvements in supply chain agility, efficiency, and resilience. We provide a unique, non-commercial community where members forge long-term relationships as they work together to improve patient care. For more information about SMI, including a complete list of members, visit: www.smisupplychain.com.
Contacts
Gabe Perna
gabe@clariumhealth.com