The Maharashtra public health department is all set to introduce 'issue to patient' module (drug distribution to patient) to its web based supply chain automation of the drug management system, e-Aushadhi from April 1, 2016.
Once the 'issue to patient' module is introduced, details of medicines issued to patients by drug distribution counters at primary health centres and district hospitals will be automatically updated by the e-Aushadhi software.
Six months back, barcoding module was incorporated in e-Aushadhi application. With this, users can scan barcode on medicines to get details of drugs and its expiry date. It helps in maintaining medicine quality.
Besides this, there are various modules of e-Aushadhi viz. the procurement module incorporating generation of purchase order, terms and conditions of payments, allocation of the consignee list and scheduling the supply to consignee. Users can also see the amount in that particular purchase head at the time of finalising any item for purchase.
Inventory management module incorporates categorisation of items, codification etc to ensure that drugs which are in high demand are available at the district drug warehouse so that they are distributed to the sub stores and distribution counters at the earliest.
With this, users will have detail of stock available at several levels, supplies in pipeline, distribution and consumption status in the state.
e-Aushadhi was introduced by the department in 2013 to improve the stock and supply of the drugs and surgical items in the health institutions of the state. The web based application has helped monitor purchase, inventory management and distribution of various drugs, and surgical items to various drug warehouses of the state, district hospitals and primary health centres. It has streamlined the process of inventory management and brought transparency in the system. The web-based application also has helped in tracking of real time stock position and drug distribution, increased the supply chain capacity by deceasing manual intervention to minimal levels and considerably reduced wastage of drugs, said Dr G S Chougule, joint director (procurement cell), directorate of health services.
Currently, drug stock of 2297 health institutions falling under public health department is being monitored by e-Aushadhi including 23 district hospitals, 4 general hospitals, 28 rural hospitals (100 bed), 57 rural hospitals (50 bed), 360 rural hospitals, 10 women hospitals, 2 cottege hospitals, 1811 primary health centres and 2 regional referral hospitals, said Dr Chougule.
Of them, primary health centres are required to maintain stock of 364 essential drugs and 103 consumable drugs and district hospitals need to keep stock of 673 essential medicines and 258 consumable drugs, he added.
“We have plans to introduce supplier interface module to e-Aushadhi in coming months so that contractors can get status of their purchase order and track the movement of their items,” he informed.