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The Value of E-Commerce

For much of the past year, the promise of Internet-enabled e-commerce to deliver savings seemed just that: a promise. But a new study from Novation and Arthur Anderson goes a long way to finally putting some figures on the value and potential cost savings of a web-based supply chain.

For much of the past year, the promise that Internet-enabled e-commerce would deliver savings to hospital customers seemed just that: a promise. Studies such as the highly visible and widely quoted EHCR report from several years back identified the problem as the enormous inefficiency of today's hospital-supply chain. But no one could prove that B2B approaches offered any real solution. Perhaps that's part of the reason for the B2B industry's sudden and precipitous crash last spring: investors nervous about and frustrated with slow results simply gave up hope of finding value in the new approaches.

But now, in a soon-to-be-released study, Novation Inc.—the hospital purchasing group of VHA Inc. and the University HealthSystems Consortium—and consulting...

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