How AI Is Redefining Supply Chains for Underserved Industries – A Conversation with base86 Founder Ed Isarevich

Mariya A.
Nov 26
4 min read

In the world of supply chains, the spotlight often falls on giants: global logistics companies, advanced warehouse robotics, and enterprise software behemoths. But there’s another side –– industries like dental and small-scale medical supplies, where technology is decades behind and suppliers often operate in the shadows of digital transformation.

base86, a startup focused on healthcare logistics, is changing that. We sat down with founder Ed Isarevich to talk about how AI can unlock visibility, efficiency, and equity in supply chains –– and why small suppliers need intelligent tools just as much as Fortune 500 companies.

How do you see AI changing the future of supply chains, particularly in healthcare?

The healthcare supply chain has long been fragmented, opaque, and highly inefficient –– especially in areas such as dental and medical supplies, where suppliers are often excluded from digital transformation efforts. At base86, we saw this gap and realized that bringing AI into the conversation wasn’t just a nice-to-have –– it was foundational.

AI allows us to go beyond traditional procurement systems. We’re now building tools that don’t just track spending but actively surface pricing insights, inefficiencies, and opportunities in real time –– especially for smaller suppliers who’ve historically had limited access to this kind of intelligence.

What challenges did you face applying AI in such a specialized and underserved industry?

One of the biggest hurdles is the data –– or lack of it. In traditional logistics, you might have rich IoT data or standardized SKU tracking. In healthcare, especially dental, many suppliers still rely on outdated systems or even pen-and-paper.

So before AI can do its job, you have to build the infrastructure to capture clean, consistent information. That’s what we’re doing with 86 Insights. We're essentially creating a new layer of intelligence that not only helps suppliers make better decisions but also pushes the entire ecosystem toward transparency and efficiency.

We’re not replacing people –– we’re helping them see what they couldn’t before.

Can you give an example of how AI is helping smaller suppliers in real, tangible ways?

Absolutely. One of the most exciting things we’ve seen is how AI can surface insights that were previously invisible –– especially for smaller suppliers. These businesses rarely have access to high-end analytics or procurement tools. So, what happens? They operate blind.

With AI, we can now give them real-time visibility into things like pricing fluctuations, product demand patterns, and even how their margins stack up against industry benchmarks. That’s not just helpful –– that’s empowering. We’re turning raw data into leverage for the people who’ve historically been left out of the system.

base86 has gone through several pivots –– what did those teach you about building AI for such a complex space?

Honestly, those pivots were essential. We started out focused on restaurants, then moved into dental procurement, then zoomed in on the supply side, and finally zoomed out again to look at suppliers’ needs in healthcare and even more broadly. And every time, we had to unlearn what we thought we knew.

What I found out is AI isn’t some magic overlay you throw onto an industry or as a product feature. It only works if you’re willing to rebuild the foundation. In our case, we had to rethink how procurement data flows, how decisions get made, and even how people interact with digital tools.

So yes, we’ve built platforms, shelved them, retrained engineers –– and through all of that, we got sharper. AI didn’t simplify our product –– it demanded that we make it smarter.

There’s a lot of talk about AI in big enterprise logistics –– but what about everyone else?

That’s exactly the conversation we’re trying to change. Big players like Amazon and Oracle have been using AI to optimize for years –– but most suppliers don’t have that luxury. They’re still managing pricing in spreadsheets, manually parsing competitive data, and taking weeks to cross-reference their products.

What we’re building at base86 levels the playing field. We’re giving smaller organizations access to the same kind of intelligence that the giants have – without needing a data science team.

That’s how we see the future of AI in supply chains; not just automating, but democratizing. Making powerful insights and automated processes available to everyone, not just the Fortune 500.

So what’s next for base86? Where does the company go from here?

We’re continuing to grow 86 Insights, bringing more suppliers onto the platform and layering in deeper AI-powered features. But more broadly, we’re going back to the procurement platform that started it all –– only now, we know how to build it right.

We’ve been through the chaos. We’ve built, unbuilt, and rebuilt. And through it all, we’ve come to see resilience not just as a survival trait, but as a strategy.

AI is helping us bring clarity to an industry that desperately needs it. And that’s just the beginning.