On Thursday, on the opposite side of the country in Washington, D.C. (below), the focus was on clinical outcomes, as healthcare C-suiters gathered at the Modern Healthcare Leadership Summit, where Medline was lead sponsor. Jim Boyle, CEO, and Marshall Lancaster, chief information officer, sat on a panel with Ehab Sahawneh, vice president of planning, analytics and clinical integration for Providence, with which Medline is now collaborating, along with Northwestern Medicine, to pilot Mpower™, the AI-powered supply chain resiliency solution Medline is planning to launch in early 2026. The panel’s focus was on technology like Mpower that addresses healthcare’s fragmented and often disrupted supply chain, which in the end impacts timely quality patient care.

At the same time, an entirely different type of event occurred in Oklahoma City (below), where Medline showcased another installation of AutoStore, the robotic storage and retrieval technology that’s now in use at 18 of its U.S. distribution centers. Steve Miller, chief operating officer, and other Medline leaders welcomed local officials and customer representatives – including Oklahoma City mayor David Holt and Cary Decker, vice president of supply chain for INTEGRIS Health – to celebrate the technology, which speeds up order fulfillment by retrieving bins of stored products for human pickers to pull from, helping to ensure next-day delivery to 95% of Medline’s U.S. customers. In total, more than 1,800 robots are in service across Medline’s distribution centers across the country.

“This is just one week that demonstrates our ongoing commitment to the resiliency of the supply chain,” said Marc Phillips, Medline’s senior vice president, supply chain solutions. “From healthcare provider roundtables to industry events to distribution center upgrades, we are continually learning, ideating and investing to improve the supply chain for our customers and the industry at large.”