We often share how our customers are benefiting from strategic partnerships and value-based committed purchasing agreements, but one important component to that success is the continuous evolution of our online platform.

Over the past two months, the aptitude technology team has added five new members focused on advancing both the core functionality and data engineering sides of our solution. As we continue to grow and pivot to meet the needs of the industry, we have three core initiatives for 2019 that required the expansion of our team.

3 Key initiatives

The first initiative we are pursuing and have already begun releasing to customers is new contracting options and flexibility in the marketplace. For example, while the majority of contracts in healthcare are created on a tier structure focused on market share, our customers now have the ability to contract based on units. This variation is very important as unit-based commitments are the basis for contracting in many medical device categories.

In addition, we are working on another alternative structure where suppliers and providers can agree on volume-based contracts. With each iteration and option we release, it helps us offer more flexibility to move beyond traditionally contracted categories and into more medical devices, physician preference items, and even construction and capital equipment.

Secondly, we have spent a good part of this year partnering with our parent company, Vizient, to develop enhanced data mining and reporting capabilities for their data analytics teams. These groups take a detailed, deep-dive approach to helping members evaluate their spend and surface opportunities.

By working collaboratively with these groups, we are able to leverage the technology from aptitude, and apply the expertise of the analytics teams to create an even more robust offering that can be leveraged both by Vizient and aptitude customers. It allows for a more efficient, accurate analysis of information resulting in an ability to scale up operations.

Finally, the third initiative for the technology team this year, is a focus on integrating more clinical functionality into what has been primarily a financial process. Many of our members informed us that they needed a way to bring their Clinical Quality Value Analysis (CQVA) teams into the fold – a solution that would help clinicians inform the contracting process and could be embedded into the contracting life-cycle.

As a result, we developed a searchable product catalog that enables clinical teams to review, upload, and save their information to streamline their process and inform their financial analysts.  The platform also features crowd-sourced clinical data, which aggregates and highlights how other clinical teams across the country are assessing cross-references for viable alternatives.  This is particularly helpful when facing a back-stock situation or supply constraints. It allows users to quickly find alternative equivalents and evaluate items based not only on price and availability, but on clinical judgements.

We are confident that the solutions we are developing will make a positive impact on both our supplier and provider users.  The team – new and old – is committed to listening to our customers, adding resources where they are needed, and delivering an advanced platform that can be the strong foundation of a clinically aligned supply chain.

If you have any questions, want more information, or would like training on new features, send us an email to ask@aptitude.com.

Lincoln Fellingham, VP of Technology, shares insight into plans for aptitude plus how his team is growing to meet the needs of our customers.