Harnessing Artificial Intelligence for Sustainable Healthcare Supply Chains: Enhancing Agility, Sustainability, and Risk Mitigation

The paper discusses how Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to transform the healthcare supply chain to increase its efficiency, resilience, and sustainability. The challenges encountered by healthcare systems in the context of growing complexity, resource limitations, and risks of disruption cannot be adequately addressed with traditional forecasting and decision-making models. Using AI-based predictive analytics, machine learning, and optimization systems, this study illustrates that healthcare supply chains have the ability to be more agile, more cost-effective, and less risky as well as sustainable. The mixed-method design was used, and a systematic literature review was combined with the case-based analysis of AI-based healthcare logistics solutions. Results allow concluding that AI can substantially enhance the precision of demand forecasts, optimize inventory, and respond to disruption in real-time, which will help to decrease the amount of waste and contribute to the achievement of environmental sustainability objectives. In addition, AI improves the process of risk management, as it allows identifying potential shortages and bottlenecks early and streamlines the cooperation of stakeholders based on data. Nonetheless, issues, including the quality of data, integrating it with the old systems, and employee preparedness continue to be the major adoption obstacles. The conclusion of this paper is that the AI can not only optimize the healthcare supply chain processes but also lead to a radical change towards sustainability, resilience, and patient-centered service provision.