Bart’s Health – Using IMS to deliver efficiency, resilience, and sustainability

Bart’s Health NHS Trust runs five hospitals, including a Major Trauma Centre and a Specialist Cardiac Centre. The Supply Chain Team supports 2,103 beds and 21,000 staff, serving a population of 2.5 million with an annual expenditure of £2.5 billion.

Bart’s Health needed to manage a very large, complex consumables estate across five hospitals while reducing emergency ordering, waste, and the administrative burden on clinical staff.

The trust also faced limited storage space, high purchase-order costs, and the need to improve visibility and reconciliation for high‑cost, tariff‑excluded devices.

This led to four distinct aims for the project:

• Improve supply visibility and resilience across all sites.
• Reduce stock holdings and waste while freeing clinical space.
• Automate transactional activity to lower purchase order costs and return time to frontline staff.
• Secure accurate reimbursement for high cost tariff excluded devices.

In November 2025, Barts Health won the national public sector award at the Supply Chain Excellence Awards for supply chain maturity and innovation.

In-Trust Inventory Management System (IMS) deployed as the single, unified backbone for supply operations across the trust. Key capabilities used: point of care scanning, location-level stock tracking, monthly cycle counts, and HCTED reconciliation workflows.

• Rollout and standardisation: IMS implemented across five hospitals with consistent location and product-line configuration.
• Operational adoption: Point of care scanning and monthly counts established (100,000 counts/month).
• Data-driven optimisation: Consumption and stock data analysed to identify excess holdings, expiry risk, and redistribution opportunities.
• Collaboration and procurement: Trust-level initiatives (bulk buys, redistribution) coordinated using IMS visibility; HCTED reconciliation performed to recover eligible reimbursement.

• Scale and control: 51,000 product lines tracked across 269 locations; 95% of consumables managed through IMS.
• Operational improvements: Unified IMS reduced emergency orders and improved visibility.
• Financial gains:

• Environmental impact: Consolidated deliveries lowered emissions and packaging waste.
• Clinical benefit: Thousands of staff hours returned to frontline care by reducing supply management tasks.

• Scale best practices: Share IMS configuration and workflows across other trust departments and partner trusts.
• Continuous optimisation: Use ongoing consumption analytics to further reduce holdings and expiry risk.
• Extend automation: Increase automated ordering thresholds and supplier integrations to drive further PO cost reductions.
• Sustainability targets: Quantify emissions reductions and set targets for further consolidation and packaging reduction.
• Knowledge sharing: Publish a playbook of the glove and gown initiatives to accelerate savings across the region.