Tag Archives: health

Why Choose Lanistar Over Starling Bank And Wise For Your Finance Management?

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Given the monumental developments that are being carried out in the technological sector, finance management has become way easier than one can imagine.

The Importance of Finance Management and Health

Everyone has a set of personal financial goals and commitments which alters the kind of route one must take in building and investing their finances. The commitments may vary from the repayment of debt to taking care of an individual that is financially dependent on you.

Regardless of the intensity of one’s financial commitments, one must be rather mindful of the way one spends and saves. Managing your finances personally also builds financial literacy which makes you cognisant of niche financial concepts. Other than managing your finances, it helps in avoiding any risk that you may fall into upon association with a bank or a scheme. It also helps in building monetary immunity which might even help you in surviving comfortably for some time when you don’t necessarily earn disposable income.

Hence, finance management becomes increasingly important for students or people who are switching careers to figure out their true passion. Some of the basic tips to manage your finances well would be to create a budget and stay committed to it. Use the option of a savings account to put money aside for your additional needs. It is also important to build an emergency account for contingencies. Invest your money safely and only invest as much as you can afford to lose.

Moreover, the development of fintech has made the management of personal finances such a no-brainer that everyone is opting for platforms and apps that aim at building their user’s financial health.

Role of Fintech in Finance Management

The world of fintech goes way beyond blockchain development and cryptocurrencies. Although it may be interesting to note how investing in digital assets such as crypto, NFTs, and DAO projects can build a financially sound portfolio. Many investors have reported cases of monumental profits after investing in crypto. The crypto ecosystem is very compatible with the new generation and could be an ideal investment space if navigated wisely.

Moreover, the fintech space is seeing the development of platforms such as Lanistar, Monzo, Wise, Starling Bankt, etc that is making finance management a cakewalk for the general user base. These apps come with constant reminders and updates that make you look back at your expenditure and register it better while planning future spending. Some platforms help you monitor all your bank accounts and finances from a single platform which helps you streamline your assets better.

Check out Lanistar For Financial Convenience

Lanistar is a social media-powered fintech platform that is revolutionising the area of personal finance management. It offers a polymorphic payment card that can hold up to eight different cards. With the help of this card, users can organise their finances through one point of contact. The card offers features such as 3DS and one-time pin codes that ensure financial security for the users.

The company works actively with influencers and has been vouched for by big names such as the Brazilian football player Richarlison amongst others. The Lanistar app is available for download from App Store and Google Play alike.

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Supply Chain Creativity During COVID-19

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Supply Chain Creativity During COVID-19

Supply Chain Creativity During COVID-19

Just as we typically don’t think about how groceries get to our grocery store, we probably don’t wonder how medical supplies get to our hospital room or doctor’s office. But for those of us who work in hospital supply chain management, we know a lot of negotiating, storage and coordination goes into this at the best of times.

As the world confronts COVID-19, issues regarding medical supply chains have been thrust into the spotlight. When a previously nonexistent health threat spreads across the globe in a matter of weeks, demand for essential medical equipment suddenly outstrips supply. Fraudulent vendors become a higher risk. Established vendor partnerships are strained. In fact, this virus originated near a major personal protective equipment (PPE) manufacturing area in China. This greatly reduced supply at a time when the world needed it most.

While most of UW Health has thus far not encountered a surge of COVID-19 patients, we have still faced unprecedented challenges since the onset of the pandemic. To overcome these current and potential shortages, serious creativity and collaboration need to be front and center.

With so much still unknown, a best-case scenario might be a new normal of carefully caring for COVID-19 patients in steady conjuncture with the many other patients who need our support. This creates a significant and prolonged increased need for PPE, posing tremendous challenges as the supply chain is under immense stress.

Using Public and Private Partnerships

As an academic medical center where our physicians are also faculty of the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, UW Health often works methodically. Now that time is of the essence, the health system and university have been collaborating closely and swiftly, and UW Health is benefiting greatly from its close partnership and proximity to the institution’s educators and students.

Making Unusable PPE Usable

In mid-March, UW Health received 1,250 hoods from the strategic national stockpile. These were meant to be used with our PAPRs, the respiratory protection systems that protect healthcare professionals when bodily fluids can be aerosolized, such as during intubation. Powered by a blower strapped around the wearer’s waist and connected by a hose to a hood covering the head, PAPRs offer the highest form of protection to a medical professional’s head, face and respiratory system during high-risk procedures.

Keeping Hand Sanitizer Flowing

As COVID-19 rapidly spread, the supply of hand sanitizer dwindled everywhere. We knew we would be hard-pressed to safely care for patients without it, so again we relied on the ingenuity and expertise of partners, this time at the UW-Madison School of Pharmacy’s Zeeh Pharmaceutical Experiment, which typically focuses on supporting drug development.

Reuse and Recycle

Sometimes supply chain challenges are not about getting or making more, but making existing supplies go further. We began sterilizing used N-95 respirators to reuse if we experienced a significant surge of patients. We have not yet needed to use them, but preparing for the worst is vital.

UW Health goes through thousands of surgical, isolation and patient gowns each week. Sourcing new, disposable gowns would be nearly impossible in the current climate. Fortunately, we are part of a laundry cooperative that not only launders all linens but sterilizes surgical and isolation gowns. Partnerships like this put a health system in a better position to control the supply chain than if it were a contracted client to a third-party laundry vendor or disposable gown supplier.

Read more at Supply Chain Creativity During COVID-19

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Retailers worth $3.3trn scaling up supply chain sustainability

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Leading retail powerhouses are stepping up on supply chain sustainability, according to the latest figures from CDP, a global environmental impact non-profit.

The world’s largest retailer, Walmart, has just been joined by three more of the top 20 retail companies – CVS Health, Target Corporation and Tesco – in collecting data from suppliers to reduce environmental risk and cut carbon emissions in the supply chain.

Ten years after CDP started collecting supply chain data on behalf of the world’s largest purchasing organisations, 115 organisations – representing a combined annual spend of more than US$3.3 trillion – are now requesting data from over 11,500 suppliers.

This is more than a 15% increase from last year, when 99 organisations requested data.

Sonya Bhonsle, Head of Supply Chain at CDP, commented: “With emissions in the supply chain on average around four times greater than those from a company’s direct operations – and rising to up to seven times greater for retailers and consumer-facing companies – large multinational corporations cannot comprehensively address their environmental impact without looking to their supply chains.

“It’s very encouraging to see so many of the world’s biggest buyers taking supply chain sustainability seriously. By requesting data from their suppliers, they are shining a light on the risks hidden deep within their production chains – and uncovering a myriad of opportunities for reducing their overall environmental footprint, boosting innovation and cutting costs.”

The rise in companies scrutinising their supply chains coincides with growing momentum behind the take-up of science-based targets – goals that allow companies to reduce their emissions in line with the decarbonisation required to keep global temperature increase below two degrees Celsius, the central aim of the Paris Agreement.

The Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), which helps companies develop and approves such targets, requires companies to set scope 3 targets if their scope 3 emissions account for at least 40% of their total emissions. For global retailers that do not manufacture many of the products they sell, scope 3 emissions in their supply chain can be far greater than 40%.

Read more at Retailers worth $3.3trn scaling up supply chain sustainability

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The Partnership for Supply Chain Management Implements One Network’s Control Tower Solution

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One Network Enterprises, a global provider of multi-party digital network platform and services, recently announced that The Partnership for Supply Chain Management (PFSCM)—a nonprofit organization providing global procurement and distribution services for low- and middle-income countries—has implemented One Network’s Supply Chain Control Tower solution to advance its end-to-end supply chain visibility.

According to spokesmen, PFSCM has a long history of innovating and driving fundamental improvements in the performance of global health supply chains.

Spokesmen added that it is migrating critical requisition, order, and transportation management functions into its existing One Network Real Time Value Network (RTVN) decision-making supply chain suite.

“Our goal is to strengthen, develop, and manage secure, reliable, cost-effective, and sustainable global supply chains to improve the lives of people in underdeveloped countries,” said Richard Owens, PFSCM Director. “By extending One Network’s Control Tower capabilities on our RTVN, we can provide real-time visibility, digital collaboration, and advanced analytics to move to true data-driven decision-making. Our collaboration with One Network is central to PFSCM’s digital transformation and provides us the foundation we need to drive the next wave of innovation within global supply chains for public health.”

In an interview with SCMR, Owens said that PFSCM first conducted an internal evaluation of its existing systems, plus a landscape analysis of what potential solutions existed before making the deal.

“The evaluation produced six scenarios, consisting of different combination of three systems,” he said. “The first recommendation was to go with One Network, which was accepted first by PFSCM’s management team, and then by PFSCM’s Board, who approved the project budget last September.

Read more at The Partnership for Supply Chain Management Implements One Network’s Control Tower Solution

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Procurement Performance Measurement in 2018

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Organizations today rely on Procurement to drive value beyond unit price savings. For Chief Procurement Officers (CPO), it is challenging to measure the performance of managers who drive these sources of value. Fair and accurate performance measurement is critical for attracting, retaining and promoting top procurement talent. In a typical procurement environment, some categories require larger efforts on cost and risk avoidance, with minor savings achievements, while other categories yield significant savings by nature of the products purchased. For some categories, securing the latest technology to enable top-line growth may far outweigh the importance of purchase price. How can the CPO assess individual category manager performance, each driving unique value, on an even playing field?

Measuring Procurement Effectiveness

In mature procurement organizations, category managers develop value-based category strategies to target underlying metrics, beyond purchase price variance (PPV), based on their unique category and/or portfolio.

Individual performance effectiveness of category managers is then based on their ability to:

  1. Effectively engage with cross-functional business stakeholders
  2. Demonstrate category expertise
  3. Develop and deliver against value-based category strategies

Building a value-based category strategy

Identify Value Drivers

Use of a Category Health Methodology, in which category managers can analyze spend and determine what types of underlying variables (or value drivers), can predict strong business results.

Translate Value Drivers into Specific Business Objectives

Category managers identify value drivers and translate those drivers into specific business objectives.

Based on these value drivers, the category manager outlines the following objectives:

  1. Dual source plastic housings in order to improve supply assurance
  2. Shift product Y to preferred supplier X
  3. Negotiate contracts with supply base in order to map cost to commodity index

Determine a Set of Quantifiable Scorecard Metrics

The final step in the process is to map the objectives to metrics that can be used to assess, and compare, the category manager’s performance against the goals laid out in their category strategy.

Read more at Procurement Performance Measurement in 2018

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Apple makes “significant progress” with green supply chain ambitions

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Apple’s efforts to create a greener supply chain resulted in significant progress in 2017, according to the tech giant.

Since 2007, almost 15mn supplier employees have been trained on their rights, including 3mn just last year.

All iPhone final assembly sites around the world have now been certified as zero waste to landfill, while more of Apple’s products were made using renewable energy, while also reducing overall energy usage and carbon emissions.

In a release, Apple said its suppliers implemented energy efficiency improvements that reduced more than 320,000 annualised metric tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions in 2017.

Apple claims it “goes deeper into the supply chain to find issues and fix them” more than any other company in its industry and each year it will do more to raise the bar and protect the people who make Apple products as well as the planet.

Last year Apple launched a programme to help improve health awareness for women at its suppliers, so they are better prepared to take control of their health and share that knowledge back to their families and communities.

The programme started at facilities in India and China and provides information and access to services, including self-examination for early cancer detection, nutrition, personal care and maternal health. Apple aims to reach 1mn women at its suppliers around the world by 2020.

“We believe that everyone making Apple products deserves to be treated with dignity and respect and we’re proud that almost 15mn people understand their workplace rights as a result of the work we’ve done over the years. We’re going further with health education programs and new opportunities for advancement at our suppliers,” said Jeff Williams, Apple’s COO.

“A new preventive health care curriculum is encouraging women to focus on their personal health, and hopefully share that knowledge with their families and communities. Our goal is to reach 1mn women by 2020. We know our work is never done and we’re committed to raising the bar every year across our supply chain.”

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How a pharmaceutical supply chain company is taking advantage of the Internet of Things

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In 2014, during a routine check from the Ministry of Health in the U.S., it was found that only 55 percent of vaccines were stored and transported in the temperature conditions that ensured the medication maintained its quality. To put that into perspective, every baby born receives vaccines to prevent diseases such as small pox and measles. If only 55 percent of those vaccinations maintain safety requirements, that creates a situation where a majority of babies don’t get the quality dosage and medication they need to protect them from diseases.

To overcome this challenge, organizations are turning to technology. More specifically, the Internet of Things (IoT) is making it possible to ensure the safer transportation and delivery of medications. Dutch pharmaceutical services company, AntTail, is paving the way for building innovative IoT applications that more effectively track the conditions of medications while in transit.

The team at AntTail built an IoT application using the Mendix low-code application development platform. The application collects sensor data from medication shipments to provide information on temperature, as well as send push notifications to patients with reminders on when to take the medication.

One of the barriers for creating IoT apps is the requirement of many disparate technologies. AntTail uses a central router as a hub for all of the sensors, collecting the data when there is a connection and storing the data when there is no connection to ensure that no data is lost. The Router uses Vodafone’s Managed IoT Connectivity Platform as a way to connect to AWS, and has a Java service running that puts the data into Hadoop.

Read more at How a pharmaceutical supply chain company is taking advantage of the Internet of Things

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Socialbakers bakes its data analytics down to a Social Health Index

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Can social media analytics be compressed into an elevator pitch?

That was a question Lenovo asked its social analytics firm, Socialbakers. The result, launching today, is a Social Health Index that presents a few top-level indicators of a brand’s standing in social media vis-a-vis any competitors.

“When you’re with a VP, you have to [quickly] give them a very clear idea of where we stand,” Lenovo’s director of the Digital and Social Center of Excellence Rod Strother told us. Given that need, Lenovo then provided input to Socialbakers for developing the Index.

It offers a single top-level number on a 100-point scale, as well as single numbers representing the client’s — or a competitor’s — social health on Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube. Other platforms will be added at some point, the social analytics firm said.

Additionally, an area graph visually depicts the four groups of data that go into the scores — participation, follower/fan/subscriber acquisition and retention, and shareability.

“We find it’s difficult for clients to comprehend all” the statistics in ordinary social analytics reports, Socialbakers’ CEO and co-founder Jan Rezab told VentureBeat.

“It’s very, very complicated,” he said, noting that his firm tracks over 180 metrics for social media.

Read more at Socialbakers bakes its data analytics down to a Social Health Index

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7 Reasons to Merge Revenue Cycle and Supply Chain Management

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Using technology to merge supply chain management and revenue cycle departments may help advance cost-to-charge transparency and increase accuracy in terms of managing reimbursement costs. “In most provider organizations[,] supply chain management (SCM) and revenue cycle operations function in silos, occasionally responding to anecdotal evidence to make improvements in the processes linking the two areas,” confirms HSRC-ASU. “Hospitals and health care systems that become proficient in managing the revenue environment achieve strategic advantage by reaching their financial goals and assuring a stream of revenues to support their clinical efforts,” the researchers explain.

According to HealthITAnalytics, supply chain management should be considered as a marathon endeavor, not a short-lived sprint. Successful supply chain involves connecting costs with analytics to enact substantial long term change. Additionally, hospital executives claim non-EHR health IT acquisitions strengthen the supply chain, states HealthITAnalytics.

Consistency is an essential key to ensuring accurate coding and pricing efforts. “Linking the traditional aspects of supply chain management (e.g., strategic sourcing, logistics, and inventory management) to margin management decreases the probability of lost charges occurring,” the researchers state. “Prices should be strategically set to optimize maximum allowable reimbursement. Charge capture processes should be incorporated in pricing strategies in each of the targeted areas,” they add.

HSRC-ACU confirms seven reasons to combine revenue cycle management and supply chain management:

  1. Increased and more accurate reimbursements
  2. Strengthened contract negotiations and enhanced contract compliance
  3. Improved transparency
  4. Streamlined cross-check utilization of supplies and ease of monitoring supply revenue
  5. Capturing cost-to-charge data visibility will be smoother
  6. Billing will be more accurate
  7. Labor will be wisely utilized and not wasted

Read more at 7 Reasons to Merge Revenue Cycle and Supply Chain Management

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