McKesson Corp said Wednesday it released the first cloud-based system to track supply chain purchases, a hospital's biggest cost after labor, according to the company.

The system, dubbed Strategic Supply Sourcing, can draw on data from multiple materials management information systems to give users a single view of the supply chain spending, the Fortune 500 company said. McKesson said the product could help providers eliminate duplicate contracts while better analyzing spending on supplies, physician preference items and group purchasing organization-negotiated equipment.

Citing a Materials Management in Healthcare article, Chris Bauleke, president of Health Systems Performance Management with McKesson's provider technology group, said in a statement that health care supply chain costs eat up about 40 percent of a hospital's budget.

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