the scientific director and chief executive officer of SCAN Health, an international knowledge translation platform that engages health system leaders and supply chain experts to advance global capacity to adopt and scale best practices in the healthcare supply chain to offer traceability of products and care processes from bench to bedside to patient outcomes. She is a full professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at the Odette School of Business, University of Windsor in Windsor, ON. She can be reached by e-mail at
A postdoctoral fellow in the Supply Chain Advancement Network in Health (SCAN Health) at the University of Windsor in Windsor, ON. He can be reached by e-mail at
Healthc Q. 2021 Apr;24(1):36-43. doi: 10.12927/hcq.2021.26467.
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the many challenges that provincial health systems have experienced while scaling health services to protect Canadians from viral transmission and support care for those who get infected. Supply chain capacity makes it possible for health systems to deliver care and implement public health initiatives safely. In this paper, we present emerging findings from a national research study that documents the key features of the fragility of the health supply chain evident across the seven Canadian provinces. Results suggest that the fragility of the health supply chain contributes to substantive challenges across health systems, thus limiting or precluding proactive and comprehensive responses to pandemic management. These findings inform strategies to strengthen supply chain capacity and performance in order to enable health systems to effectively respond to pandemic events.
COVID-19 大流行凸显了省级卫生系统在扩大卫生服务以保护加拿大人免受病毒传播并为感染者提供支持方面所经历的许多挑战。供应链能力使卫生系统能够安全地提供护理和实施公共卫生措施。在本文中，我们介绍了一项全国性研究的初步结果，该研究记录了加拿大七个省份的卫生供应链脆弱性的关键特征。结果表明，卫生供应链的脆弱性对整个卫生系统造成了实质性挑战，从而限制或排除了对大流行管理的主动和全面应对。这些发现为加强供应链能力和绩效的战略提供了信息，以便使卫生系统能够有效应对大流行事件。
