Karnataka State Drugs Logistics & Warehousing Society (KSDLWS) is now on an aggressive mode to develop and implement Drug Distribution Management System (DDMS). This will enable computerising and networking drug distribution process across its 30 districts, link pharmacy outlets at government hospitals, primary health centres (PHCs) and community health centres (CHCs) from April 2015. Karnataka will be the second state in the country after Haryana to utilise DDMS.
On the infrastructure front, KSDLWS will augment its warehouses from the current 14 in 30 districts to 30 facilities. It will commission 13 new warehouses in a month, set up another three by taking facilities for rent and is in discussion with the Karnataka State Warehousing Corporation for the same. In order to man the new facilities, hiring of personnel is underway.
Efforts to re-engineer drug tendering process is also on the anvil where KSDLWS is looking to reduce the procurement duration by 45 days. Now it takes 105 days for the process because bids take 60 days, evaluation of applicants requires a month and 15 days for approval.
DDMS is developed by the National Informatics Centre, Karnataka. Around 3,000 personnel including pharmacists and data entry teams across government medical centres and KSDLWS will be trained to use the application. Its implementation would bring in transparency and efficiency. We need to ensure total user-acceptability and will facilitate real-time monitoring of the drug distribution across the 30 district hospitals, 2,500 PHCs and 200 CHCs, Prabhuling Kavalikatti, Additional Director, KSDLWS told Pharmabiz.
For the development of DDMS, KSDLWS and NIC Karnataka visited Haryana to ascertain details. After this, domain details and technical requirements covering institution information and probable drug lists were provided. In fact our DDMS is a modified version of the existing application at Haryana,” he added.
The World Health Organization (WHO) identified an exhaustive list of 700 drugs for distribution but India’s State Drugs Logistics & Warehousing Societies coming under the department of health and family welfare have opted for 370 medicines.
For 2014-15, Karnataka government provided Rs.150 crore for drug procurement to KSDLWS. But the DDMS project and new warehouses are funded through the Society’s internal accruals.
In 2009, the KSDLW was procuring surplus drugs and the state government in 2011, effected a major transformation in drug procurement system moving away from rate contract to e-procurement.
Currently, KDLWS has 40 employees and has proposed to the health and family welfare department for a revision of its staffing pattern. It requires a dedicated logistics expert besides augment its drug procurement team from one doctor to adding six more candidates armed with MD in pharmacology. “With seven doctors and we will be able to appoint them across districts to supervise drug procurement,” he said.