| To succeed in the 21st century global marketplace, the supply chain should be operated and managed at maximum efficiency. The supply chain is considered to be the source of the next opportunity for improving the efficiency of organizations. Today, the use of the Internet technology for conducting business transactions is considered to be a major tool in business practice. The Internet is being used for information sharing and for accessing electronic data by many organizations. The development of Internet technology has brought easier and faster access for interactions between customers and suppliers and is also changing the entire structure of the supply chain.; In the healthcare industry, cost is considered to be one of the main problems for attaining efficiency. A hospital, which could be a focal point in the healthcare supply chain, has been struggling to deal with the difficult issue of achieving high quality of service while reducing cost. As the healthcare industry begins to recognize the need for improvement in supply chain effectiveness, the necessity of adapting to the new business environment is recognized as a necessary market entering strategy.; This research investigates supply chain management with an emphasis on the use of B2B e-commerce as an organizational strategic tool for improving supply chain performance. The overall objective of this research is to empirically examine the effectiveness of B2B e-commerce in the healthcare industry, and to assess the relationship between the implementation of Internet-based B2B e-commerce and supply chain performance. In order to assess the effects of e-commerce implementation on SCM, a comprehensive theoretical framework was developed. Several statistical methods were employed to analyze the collected data from the survey. |
