Vaccine Management System
Best Vaccine Management System For Healthcare Organizations & Government
21 November 2020
Vaccines have changed the course of the medical system. The widespread availability of vaccines to mitigate illness or diseases has drastically changed over the last 20 years. These vaccines are used by Family doctors, Pediatricians, Internal Medicine, OBGYN, and many other medical experts in their medical practice in today's times. Moreover, the retail clinic and pharmacies administer vaccines in many states. There are some components to managing vaccines, including inventory management, supply chain management system, cold storage management system, and patient management system.
Many Pediatric and other medical experts are still using either a manual process or paper process for inventory management & recording vaccines administration. Such manual processes take hours of time every month, and most have problems with consistency and accuracy. Earlier, some of the solutions on the market either delivered an intricate, time-intensive vaccine management process, and the solution rendered was costly to the office.
Medical facilities spend a considerable portion of their budget on buying vaccines for their patients. The discovery of new diseases has raised the cost of immunization every year. The hospitals can mitigate the vaccine wastage by proper maintenance and check of the patient's medical history. A vaccine management system is a one-stop solution for managing the immunization process in your medical center.
A proper vaccine inventory management concentrates on the total life cycle of handling the vaccine supply chain for your office. Successful vaccine providers can buy, store, administer, and bill for vaccines in an eco-friendly manner. Several providers use public-private partnerships for critical components of their total inventory vaccine management system.
Let's begin with the vaccine management process.
Inventory Management System
Maintaining a supply chain is challenging and involves various processes and industries. A robust inventory management strategy is key for effective supply chain management and will impact the business's performance.
What Is an Inventory Management System?
The inventory management system is the process of ordering, storing, and profiting from goods moving down the supply chain from manufacturer to consumer. As simple as this sounds, many critical processes are involved in maintaining a structured and efficient inventory. Balancing between all the components of a storage system is challenging.
Essential Features of the Inventory Management System
Inventory Control:
It manages products in stock at the warehouse and plays a critical role in supply chain management. The control tools can categorize products by type, location & SKU, audit data, produce reports in real-time & search, filter & view products.
Inventory Management:
These features regulate the data from other parts of the system, such as inventory control. Moreover, it also tackles business processes that happen before the inventory arrives at a warehouse, and the way inventory reaches other destinations.
Inventory Tracking:
To apply inventory controls, you must track the status of goods and raw materials in the supply chain. You can automate the manual tasks with perpetual inventory tracking. For instance, the system naturally produces a tracking number while creating an invoice.
Inventory Barcoding:
Barcoding software helps prevent data entry errors and automate business working that needs communication with other parts of the system. Gathering, storing, and arranging digital inventory data makes inventory operations quick and more precise. Barcoding software can sync with digital documentation & reporting features.
Inventory Optimization:
Inventory optimizations take inventory planning to a higher level. Rather than standard ordering formulas and a basic ordering process, you can use tools that render inventory trends, automated reports, and a view of changes across the whole supply chain.
Inventory Alerts:
Several modules trigger inventory alerts that help prevent waste, enhance inventory financials, and handle customer expectations.
Cloud Infrastructure:
Cloud-based software is a cost-effective and scalable solution. Cloud computing means businesses don't require to recruit a dedicated workforce to manage and maintain systems. This feature allows automated backups, secure access, and real-time collaboration across various locations.
IoT Integrations:
IoT brought automated inventory controls and reporting, GPS tracking, digital labeling, RFID-enabled tracking, and GPS tracking. Moreover, it has also been used to enhance security against theft.
Mobile Apps:
Mobile apps running on wireless devices interact with back-office systems and central databases to accelerate multi-location inventory processes.
AI & Machine Learning:
AI-enabled virtual agents are transforming how organizations share inventory availability to eCommerce users. They utilize ML and web-based services to convey out-of-stock inventory, make suggestions based on an active shopping cart or user history.
Several medical practices have either insufficient vaccine inventory management systems or labor-intensive systems that are expensive and a burden on the practice. For instance, several practices record stock on paper or use an MS Excel spreadsheet. Some inventory management practices on the market do not give an option to link the vaccine from delivery to the patient so a Medical expert can check which patients received a vaccine shipment. The inventory management system should ideally record the vaccine.
Inventory management system for receiving the vaccine shipments and displays real-time the no. of doses per vaccine in the freezer.
A database that a medical expert can enter in the patient demographics, past medical records, and is updated in real-time when vaccines are administered to patients in the system.
A scheduling program for the patients to receive a vaccine in a scheduled time and an appropriate manner.
A place to order vaccines for a patient visit and the ability for staff to either use a bar code scanner or choose the vaccine rendered from the inventory listed in the freezer. The staff can record who managed the vaccine for each patient during the admin process.
A record of all patient vaccinations received.
The capability to show the vaccine schedule for the practice and in case the patient is behind on specific vaccines.
Supply Chain Management System
A good supply chain management system can help companies achieve and maintain a competitive advantage by empowering them to improve their supply chain operations from beginning to end. Supply chain management allows businesses to maximize cost-efficiency and boost productivity.
Essential Features of the Supply Chain Management System
Ability to Integrate
Technology should help integrate various entities such as OEMs, suppliers, shippers, customers, and warehouse centers. It should connect with all other apps, including legacy systems, third-party apps, enterprise software, help desk, and email, irrespective of the operating system, information source, or platform. This helps remove connectivity issues and allow efficient information flow across a chain.
Moreover, it even cuts down maintenance costs and avoids overlaps. This results in efficient use of logistics, better production planning, and avoiding excess stock or lack of stocks.
The capability to create orders and bill users from a central location eases the work of the operations department. It removes the chance for miscommunication or wrong dues.
Real-time & Collaboration Abilities
Real-time info is necessary to avoid bottlenecks, lost goods, or dissatisfied customers. The real-time capability allows businesses to respond to changes in the supply chain instantly as they emerge.
A proper supply chain management software should permit various investors to work unitedly on a project to be on the same page.
This can be possible through:
- Personalized dashboards
- Real-time alerts
- Self-service portals
- Role-based authorization
Process Optimization Abilities
Repetitive tasks are automated and facilitate staff to work on more income-generating ones.
The automatic order-to-cash cycle reduces the product life cycle and the need for paper-based documentation. It creates solid links between manufacturing, warehousing, & delivery.
Besides automating operational tasks with custom rules, enterprises can use ML and AI to enhance other lengthy tasks.
Optimization tools in transport and logistics help businesses shift goods efficiently, at the lowest cost. This is crucial due to rising fuel costs and continuously evolving regional and national regulations that can engender uncertainties or delay the shipping movements.
Analytics & Forecasting
Alongside automating everyday tasks, a good supply chain management software must help you assess your business, with in-build analytics and predict capabilities to assist you:
- Understand the health & performance of your organization
- Recognize bottlenecks
- Capitalize on your existing strengths
- Predict customer demand and plan future production
- Identify inefficiencies in your system
- Anticipate events likely to occur
Some advanced software has predictive analytics that balance inconsistency between demand and supply by providing data on internal and external trends.
Personalization
Pre-established components in the application and tailored formulation of business rules present flexibility that helps companies embrace changes quickly and go to market quicker with tailored solutions for customers. Supply chain solutions allow developers to extend their features with programming languages such as Python and Java.
Cloud-based Mobility and Access
The cloud-based supply chain software allows authorized users to access businesses from anywhere and at any time to continue to manage, track, and supervise the progress of transactions on the move. Any extra benefit is that companies can set up a cloud-based solution at a reduced cost in less time and risk than investing in an on-premise system.
Businesses can access mobile apps for managing their supply chain, and logistics have a better chance of staying up to date on many activities like shipping or order status. Real-time notifications can be directly sent to users' smart devices, a collaboration between multiple parties is improved, and instant action can be taken in any issues.
Security
Data security is the core of any business software. Companies should assess the below while choosing a supply chain management solution.
- Data encryption
- Audit trail
- Fault tolerance
- Virus-scanning
- Network monitoring
They should ensure the essential standards for safe communications between authorized parties.
Scalability
Any software must advance with a business. And as businesses invade into new regions, diversify their product portfolio, and obtain new customers, a supply chain solution should be able to manage the growing volume that comes with it. It even needs to support various applications and extra channels without impacting the system's performance.
Vaccine Supply Chain in India
The vaccine supply chain in India has the most significant immunization program in the world. Apart from a vast and varied country, vaccine management in India is stringent as the program managers do not have real-time visibility of the vaccines' inventory supplies and storage temperature across the health centers. UNDP supports the Indian Government to ensure the efficient and timely supply of vaccines to enhance access for the difficult-to-reach population.
The project implemented by UNDP in collaboration with the Indian Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, and Gavi's financial support, has introduced an integrated solution to vaccine supply chain management in India, blending the use of the latest technology with capacity-building to reinforce human resources and governance for logistics management at all levels.
In 2015, in collaboration with the Vaccine Alliance, Gavi, UNDP supported the Indian Government to launch the eVIN - electronic Vaccine Intelligence Network. eVIN is an electronic logistics management information system (eLMIS) that uses smart devices and cloud-based technology to capture real-time data across the whole vaccine cold chain.
The technical component of eVIN contains a user-friendly smartphone app that enables cold chain handlers to report on vaccine stocks, consumption, and movement with SIM-powered temperature loggers attached to cold chain equipment.
The end-to-end visibility of supply chain data lets investors easily manage and make decisions on logistics management operations to guarantee that vaccines reach patients in the time and place they are required.
After its release, eVIN has effectively digitized vaccine stocks & storage temperatures throughout 10,500 vaccine cold chain points in 12 Indian states. Moreover, there has been capacity-building of over 17k government staff, including vaccine storekeepers, cold chain managers, data entry operators beyond 550 training program sessions using eVIN application.
Through the lessons learned and implemented in the earlier states, the plan is to use the system across all 27k vaccine storage points in all 36 states and union territories in India by 2020.
Cold Storage Management System
The vaccine manufacturers regularly manage the cold chain of vaccines in the States for their vaccines from their manufacturing site to the retail clinic, medical practice, or pharmacy. After the arrival of vaccines at pharmacies, retail clinics, or medical facilities, vaccine storage management is the health center's responsibility.
Several options are available for freezers/refrigerators and remote temperature devices to supervise the freezers/refrigerators' temperature. The best part for a medical center is delivering persistent storage of vaccines. A health center should oversee their freezers and refrigerators where they store vaccines.
Why Is It So Important?
Cold storage refers to conserving normal temperatures for refrigerated vaccines from manufacture through delivery to medical care centers. During this process, investors at each stop should supervise and maintain the vaccine's minimal temperature range. The outcome of failing to supervise vaccine temperatures precisely - even for brief periods - may result in:
- Loss of potency
- Product and money wastage
- Formula degradation
- Need to re-immunize patients
- Substandard immunologic responses
Essential Features of a Good Cold Chain Storage System
Real-time Temperature Data
The power of real-time monitoring alerts improves actionability, contains loss better, and handles incidents before they have a chance to spiral cannot be understated.
Real-time Condition & Location Monitoring
Knowing that a cold chain is broken might activate a series of responses- calling the driver, determining the temperature fluctuation, and dispatching a recovery vehicle if required.
But what if the driver doesn't respond?
There can be a ton of reasons for that to happen. Thus it helps to send a set of eyes to get an idea of what happened.
While temperature is an essential parameter to assess a cold chain shipment's health, it's not essentially the only one.
If you only had the temperature data, you would be unable to tell if cold chain products are sensitive to light, vibration, humidity, or many other factors.
Supervising the Package Level
Cold chain shipments that are smaller or haven't been packed in huge aggregated containers are at significant risk of temperature excursion because of their reduced thermal mass.
It's essential to detect temperature spikes or hotspots that might have arisen for single packages like these, mainly ones near the refrigerator door, outside cold rooms for longer than the rest of the shipment.
Constant Connectivity
While shipping across borders through multi-modal channels, through thick-insulated containers, you are worsening your connectivity problem.
Real-time monitoring and alerts are possible only if your tracking devices are connected to a communications network all time. The simplest way to stay connected across the globe is to use cellular data networks or other such relay modes.
The issue with cellular connectivity is that, at times, it's spotty, mainly if you're shipping your cold chain products via remote land, rail, or sea routes. Moreover, the tracking devices should also detect and broadcast signals via the thick and heavily insulated walls of cold chain shipping containers that might contain metal or hybrid insulating materials.
If there is a flaw in connectivity, you could lose the real-time advantage of your cold chain monitoring solution.
Trusted Analytics
The issue with the latest cold chain monitoring solutions is they depend on machines, and machines tend to fail.
Faulty sensors lead to wrong alerts, lousy reports, bad decisions, or frustration.
Your cold chain monitoring solutions and the analytical infra they feed into must be flawless. The information collected needs to be confirmed and screened.
Although previous patterns, ML, and predictive algorithms could have their benefits, it's also essential to get extra real-time information - ERP data, weather feed, a news feed, traffic reports, external tracking feed for the train or ship your consignment is on.
Patient Management System
This counts the overall medical history of a patient. A patient is provided with a vaccine based on his identification documents and medical history. He/she has to give the Aadhar card or social insurance number based on which they will be immunized. They will be vaccinated for the second time only after a particular time-limit, not before that. For instance, if the time for the second vaccine is after 3 months, they won't be vaccinated before that. All the patient vaccine data is registered in the system already to avoid any confusion.
Conclusion
These are 4 major components in the vaccine management system, starting from inventory management to finally distributing it to the customer. The advancement in technology has led to growth in the vaccine management sector as well.
At hyperlink Infosystem, we offer this service to make changes in the existing vaccine management system or develop an entirely new vaccine management system for people's medical purposes and safety.
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