D I S S E C T I N G B U S I N E S S
to test whether potential solutions deliver anticipated results.
To learn more, we hear from Anagha Vyas, who, as Director of Artificial Intelligence, leads Cardinal Health’ s AI Centre of Excellence. She and her team of data scientists work to accelerate the use of AI in digital and commercial technologies.
“ With the prevalence of new AI tools growing exponentially, we believe AI has great promise across healthcare,” Vyas said.“ It has the potential to positively impact everything from clinical productivity and patient experience to optimising inventory management, reducing waste and automating processes all along the healthcare supply chain.”
The AI Centre of Excellence partners with business leaders across the company to continue monitoring emerging trends and study the successful implementation of AI solutions across the industry. Their focus: using AI in ways that can help humans work smarter and better.
Vyas said:“ We know that human oversight is critical to AI’ s success; that philosophy has long driven our use of all technologies at Cardinal Health, from customer-facing solutions to automation in our distribution centres. We’ re very focused on balancing the promise of AI with its responsible use to deliver the greatest possible value.”
This balanced approach supports incremental progress and empowers the team to make steady, meaningful improvements rather than revolutionary breakthroughs. From leveraging AI to provide actionable insights to customers that save time and costs, to enabling a streamlined customer service experience, these solutions make a real difference in the day-to-day lives of providers and patients and pave the way for future advancements.
As the AI Centre of Excellence works to optimise AI implementations, they also seek to mitigate risk in parallel. Here are some of the ways they are doing so.
Using AI to solve customer problems and advance core capabilities
At Cardinal Health, every potential AI project begins with an unmet need tied to customer success. Before applying AI technologies, the team ensures the customer or business problem warrants an AI-first solution, that the data is‘ AI-ready,’ and that AI fits into the customer experience in a desirable way.
Cardinal Health has deployed a number of AI solutions that address challenges its customers face. For example, advanced automation technology and robotics in distribution centres help ensure that frontline workers are better able to pick, pack and ship customers’ orders with quality, speed and accuracy. Combining AI and robotics within Cardinal Health facilities also helps optimise inventory storage space and inventory management and boost employee productivity and efficiency.
“ AI also allows us to more effectively navigate conditions that impact product availability in the supply chain, and to provide a higher level of service to our customers,” Vyas said.
For example, AI and Machine Learningenabled planning and inventory solutions give Cardinal Health supply chain leaders visibility into inventory data across the supply chain, so they know what quantities of products we have at any given time, and have insights into customer orders and any fluctuations in demand, so that they can act proactively to maintain proper product levels in Cardinal
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