Managing supply chain challenges: insights from NHS Supply Chain

A critical supplier goes into administration. There are only eight weeks of stock left, yet it will take nine months to switch to a new supplier. What would you do? In this episode, we hear how the NHS Supply Chain's head of supply chain resilience, Tom Brailsford, and his team responded to ensure hospitals and healthcare providers never ran out of the stock they needed after an essential hand hygiene supplier went bust. Brailsford also explains how the NHS Supply Chain have transitioned to a sophisticated resilience model to ensure that 600,000 healthcare products and services a year make it to the frontline of patient care. Plus, we uncover the "cliff-edge" risks keeping healthcare procurement professionals up at night and how a UK cross-government initiative is helping to map multi-tier supplier risk.

Further reading:

• Find out more about the NHS Supply Chain
• Read the full story on how the NHS Supply Chain navigated supply disruption
• Get more insight into managing risk - watch CIPS Risk & Resilience webinar week 2025 on-demand