NEWS

Rumah Sakit Pondok Indah Taps On Wireless Technology

Mar 2007 – Every year, a typical hospital spends millions of dollars on purchasing medication. Naturally, RSPI saw the need to re-design processes and take control of its inventory through smart application of technology.

RSPI pharmacies maintain stock for more than 5,000 product types. In the past, purchasing tended to rely on visual inspection, ad-hoc decisions on how much to order leads to costly overstock and stressful buying emergencies that leads to disadvantageous pricing. Compounding this problem is the fact that most hospital pharmacies do not have a process for accurately reconciling what is received against what their pharmaceutical distributor bills.

With implementation of VESALIUS-HIS in 2004, RSPI introduced change into the process of inventory management that resulted in:

• Improvement of inventory control
• Reduced contract non-compliance (ad-hoc purchases outside negotiated contracts which usually means higher pricing)
• Maintaining consistent inventory levels
• Minimising stock run-outs and costly emergency deliveries
• Improve efficiency and cost-tracking

In Feb 2007, RSPI takes inventory management to another level. Instead of manually counting and ticking off items in the stores, the hospital will roll-out wireless stock take management which makes performing an inventory cycle count a breeze. The hospital will equip their workforce with wireless PDAs to access to real-time stock, verify against actual quantity in the stores and update the information immediately.

Through the on-going process of improving inventory management, e.g. optimising the purchasing and online stock take will free up pharmacists' time, reduce costs and increase capital availability for future needs. The result is a more efficient system that can produce significant savings for the hospital while providing pharmacy with more time to focus on patient care activities.

Tavri Deviyan, CIO, RSPI says, "With the help of technology we are able to have tighter control and checks on our inventory and see immediate results through substantial savings. The savings are largely due to proper and more accurate forecasting of stocks, reduced wastages and a more structured procurement process. The benefits are passed on through to the patients through cheaper drugs, increased patient safety and less waiting time in the pharmacy operations.”

For the handheld device, RSPI selected Dolphin 9500 Microsoft® Pocket PC PDAs which comes complete with wireless LAN that provides seamless data connectivity and bar-code readers for swift & accurate product identification.