Opportunity

Hospital staff need reliable and quick access to the right supplies, but the traditional ordering process was fragmented and inconsistent. Clinical teams relied on phone calls, digital requests, paper notes, and unit-specific workarounds. The existing processes offered little visibility into an order’s status and contributed to delays, duplicate requests, interruptions, and rework for clinical and storeroom staff.

At baseline, only 54 percent were fulfilled correctly on the first attempt, and the median fulfillment time was 103 minutes. Satisfaction was also low, with a net promoter score (NPS) of –71 among clinical staff and –67 among storeroom staff.

Intervention

PickIt is a web-based application that allows hospital staff to search for and request supplies from a user-friendly catalog. Requests are sent directly to the storeroom, and PickIt provides real-time tracking and automated communications to provide a consistent and transparent ordering process. 

The platform includes a searchable product catalog with standardized names, Lawson identification numbers, manufacturer information, and commonly used nicknames. It also captures order-level data, including delivery time, accuracy, and usage so teams can monitor performance and identify opportunities for improvement.

Impact

PickIt has improved the speed, accuracy, and experience of hospital supply ordering. It was implemented at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP) in January 2026; by September the platform has been used for 113,000 orders while maintaining 99.9 percent accuracy. Median delivery times at HUP were 26 minutes for routine supplies—four times faster than baseline.

Early satisfaction measurements also showed the NPS for clinical staff jumped from –71 to +60 and storeroom staff satisfaction rose from –67 to +80. 

After expanding across HUP’s main building, PickIt launched at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center and HUP Cedar in September 2026. The team is preparing to scale PickIt to Pennsylvania Hospital, Chester County Hospital, and Penn Medicine Princeton Health by the end of 2026.