The Role of Big Data and Twitter Data Analytics in Healthcare Supply Chain Management

Abstract

It is estimated that healthcare spending in the world’s major regions will increase from 2.4% of GDP to 7.5% during 2015 to 2020. Healthcare providers are required to deliver high-quality medical services to their customers. Since most of their budgets are spent on high cost medical equipment and medicines, there is a pressing need for them to optimize their supply chain activities such that high-quality services could be provided at lower costs. Relatedly, medical equipment and devices generate massive amounts of unused data. Big data analytics is proven to be helpful in forecasting and decision-making, and, hence, can be a powerful tool to improve healthcare supply chains. This paper extends our earlier work and presents a review on the use of big data in healthcare supply chains. We review the various concepts related to the topic of this paper including big data, big data analytics, and the role of big data in healthcare, supply chain management (SCM) and healthcare supply chain management. The role of Twitter data in SCM is also explored. The opportunities and challenges for big data enabled healthcare supply chains are discussed along with several directions for future developments. We conclude that the use of big data in healthcare supply chains is of immense potential and demands further investigation.