Automate Supply Inventory for Your Surgery Center

Most surgery centers rely on their EHR, like eClinicalWorks or Kareo, for scheduling and clinical notes. For inventory, they use a separate system like Zoho Inventory or simple spreadsheets. The fundamental problem is these two systems do not communicate. The EHR knows a dozen knee arthroscopies are scheduled, but the inventory spreadsheet is a static list, completely unaware of the upcoming demand for specific surgical kits.

This disconnect creates a high-stakes manual workflow. For example, a clinical director spends every Thursday afternoon walking the stockroom with a clipboard, manually counting high-value items like specific biologics or orthopedic implants. They compare their physical count to the upcoming week’s schedule printed from the EHR. This process takes 3-4 hours and is prone to error. They might miscount a box of sutures or overlook that one surgeon prefers a different brand of skin glue, leading to a frantic overnight order that costs 50% more in shipping.

The off-the-shelf tools that attempt to solve this fail because they lack clinical context. A generic inventory tool can track SKUs but cannot translate a CPT code like "29881" into a required list of 15 specific supply items. Connecting these systems with point-and-click tools is a non-starter; they lack the logic to map complex surgical procedures to supply "recipes."

The structural issue is that EHRs are built for patient data and billing compliance, not operational logistics. Their data models are not designed to be easily queried for supply management. This forces a human to act as the expensive, error-prone bridge between the clinical schedule and the stockroom, creating waste and operational risk every single week.

The engagement would begin with a discovery phase to map your core clinical and operational data. Syntora would audit your EHR's scheduling data, even if it requires a secure data export, and review your current inventory logs. We would identify the 20-30 most frequent procedures and work with your clinical staff to create a "bill of materials" for each one, mapping CPT codes to the exact supplies required.

The core of the system would be a Python script deployed on AWS Lambda, running on a nightly schedule. This script securely ingests the next 14 days of scheduled procedures from your EHR data. Using a procedure-to-supply map stored in a Supabase database, it calculates the total required quantity for every supply item. The system then compares this forecasted demand against your current inventory levels, which can be pulled from a Google Sheet or another system's API.

The final deliverable is a concise, automated daily alert. Your clinical director would receive an email or Slack message highlighting only the items at risk of shortage (e.g., "WARNING: Need 8 of Suture Kit X, only 3 in stock"). The system can also generate a pre-filled purchase order for one-click approval. The entire process requires zero manual data entry after the initial setup.