About
Starting Semester: Spring 2027Assigned: No
Location: Atlanta
Emory Healthcare
Client Profile
The Emory Healthcare Network, established in 2011, is the largest academically based, clinically integrated network in Georgia, with more than 3,800 physicians concentrating in 70 different subspecialties at over 580 provider locations. Our core purpose is to improve lives and provide hope by delivering exceptional care to our patients, their families and the communities we serve.Project Description
Client Profile:Winship at Emory Midtown is planning a new infusion clinic on the second floor, while chemotherapy medications and blood products will be prepared on the sixth floor. This creates a need for a reliable process to transport these critical products between pharmacy and infusion multiple times throughout the day while supporting treatment schedules, staff workflows, and patient care.
Client Need:
The client needs a reliable process for transporting chemotherapy medications and blood products between pharmacy and infusion services.
Specific needs include:
• Reducing non-value-added transportation and staff travel
• Improving efficiency of medication and blood product delivery
• Minimizing delays in treatment administration
• Improving coordination between pharmacy, nursing, and infusion workflows
• Increasing visibility into product status and location
• Improving standardization and accountability during handoffs
• Maintaining chain of custody and safety requirements
• Developing a scalable model that can support future growth in infusion volumes
• Identifying cost-effective operational solutions
Opportunities:
The physical separation between pharmacy and infusion creates opportunities to improve how chemotherapy medications and blood products are staged, transported, tracked, and received.
The project will evaluate the end-to-end distribution process to identify opportunities to reduce unnecessary trips and staff travel, improve delivery timing and handoffs, increase visibility of product status and location, and establish a more standardized and reliable distribution process.
Project Scope
The project will evaluate the end-to-end movement of chemotherapy medications and blood products from preparation and staging through transportation, receipt, and delivery to the infusion care area.
The scope includes:
• Mapping and analyzing the distribution workflow
• Measuring delivery frequency, transportation time, staff utilization, wait times, delays, demand variation, handoffs, and travel
• Identifying process constraints and root causes of inefficiency
• Evaluating alternative distribution models, including dedicated transport resources, point-of-use inventory, automated or technology-enabled transportation, product tracking, and optimized delivery schedules
• Developing and comparing future-state operating models
• Conducting an economic and return-on-investment analysis
• Developing recommendations and an implementation roadmap
Proposed solutions must maintain medication and blood product safety, chain-of-custody requirements, appropriate temperature and product controls, and applicable regulatory requirements.
Expected Deliverables:
Develop a safe, efficient, scalable, and sustainable materials distribution model for transporting chemotherapy medications and blood products from pharmacy to the new infusion clinic. The recommended future-state model should improve staff utilization, reduce non-value-added movement and delays, support reliable product delivery, and accommodate future growth in infusion volume.
The project should also provide an economic analysis of proposed alternatives and an implementation of roadmap identifying recommended changes, resource and technology needs, costs, anticipated barriers, and opportunities for phased implementation.
Skills
• Industrial Engineering• Process mapping and improvement
• Data analysis
• Operations and systems engineering
• Material flow/logistics
• Time and motion studies
• Future-state design, and economic/ROI analysis.