Symmetric Health Solutions has joined and sponsored the Healthcare Industry Resilience Collaborative (HIRC) to improve clinical supply chain data accuracy and resiliency for over 1200 hospitals. Through this partnership, Symmetric will lead workgroups and provide tools to help healthcare providers standardize product data, identify validated substitutes, and mitigate global supply chain disruptions. The collaboration aims to reduce operational friction and clinical variation by establishing shared standards for product identification and data governance.
PHILADELPHIA, Jan. 27, 2026 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Symmetric Health Solutions is proud to join and sponsor the Healthcare Resilience Collaborative (HIRC) to strengthen how hospitals manage supply data and respond to changes across their networks. This membership expands Symmetric's role in supporting health systems that depend on accurate product information for daily care delivery. Symmetric currently supports 1200+ hospitals on these efforts everyday.
HIRC brings together leaders from across the healthcare supply chain to advance shared standards for data quality, product identification, contract alignment and resilience planning.
Symmetric helps provider organizations align item data across ERPs, EHRs, and point-of-use systems to reduce delays and manual cleanup through consistent GTIN and attribute standards. This unified data foundation supports advanced resiliency planning by providing visibility into verified substitutes and standardized product lists, while leveraging granular Country of Origin and real-time tariff data to quantify financial exposure. By connecting these attributes, hospitals can effectively lower clinical variation and diversify sourcing to navigate global economic and geopolitical disruptions.
"Joining HIRC reflects our commitment to improving data accuracy across the clinical supply chain," says Symmetric CEO Rich Kucera. "Hospitals depend on current, complete and standardized product data. HIRC gives us a forum to support shared standards that make this process easier for health systems."
Symmetric will contribute in three core areas that directly advance HIRC's mission and elevate the quality of supply chain data used in patient care.
- Standards Leadership and Workgroup Participation
Symmetric will collaborate with HIRC's data standards, product identification and resiliency workgroups where provider and supplier members define best practices for GTIN use, contract alignment and cross-system data governance. Our team will share evidence from item master normalization across hundreds of hospitals, helping shape pragmatic standards that reduce ambiguity in UDI, packaging hierarchies and product lineage.
- Provider-Focused Data Improvement Initiatives
Symmetric will support HIRC provider members by contributing insights and tooling for rapid item data clean-up, ERP to EHR alignment, and validated substitute identification. This includes participating in pilot programs that test harmonized data structures or resiliency indicators, collaborating with IDNs that want to understand duplication, fragmentation or gaps in manufacturer data feeds.
- Joint Education, Transparency and Benchmarking
Symmetric will help develop educational materials, member briefings and case examples that show how accurate product data improves contracting, purchasing and clinical readiness. This may include co-hosting sessions on regulatory data sources, traceability challenges or how harmonized GTIN and attribute standards reduce operational friction. Our visibility into millions of product records offers a data-backed view of where the industry can improve and how HIRC members can adopt those practices.
Through this partnership, Symmetric aims to raise the bar for data accuracy and operational resilience, giving providers clearer, cleaner information to make safer and more cost-effective decisions to drive safer care, steadier operations and stronger resilience for the years ahead.
"We welcome Symmetric's focus on item-level normalization and practical, provider-centered approaches to data quality. Collaboration like this advances shared standards and transparency, which directly supports the resiliency goals of HIRC members," says HIRC Executive Director Jesse Schafer.
Symmetric looks forward to engaging with HIRC members at the March HIRC Academy, where we will share insights on attribute completeness, substitute identification and cross-platform data governance. In the meantime, we look forward to contributing to councils, offering complimentary resiliency analysis and audits, and promoting UDI-DI across the industry.
Media Contact
Jas Mowgood, Symmetric Health Solutions, 1 424-781-7730, [email protected], https://www.symmetrichealthsolutions.com/
Jesse Schafer, HIRC Executive Director, https://hircstrong.com/
SOURCE Symmetric Health Solutions
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