There's a Hospital Information System in there somewhere
Yikes! We didn’t set out to write a hospital information system.
But write one we have.
We’re excited that it’s already been purchased for use at the National Referral Hospital in the Solomon Islands. (Thank iu tu mas!).
Anyway, here’s the why:
- We were a little shocked to see the sort of money being charged for systems in a World Bank Funded project in a Pacific Island country. When the yearly support charge for hospital information system software at a single hospital amounts to 10% of your national drug budget, something’s out of kilter.
- We realised that in mSupply we already have a system installed in a lot of hospitals that is cost-effective and proven reliable.
- Hospitals that are running an mSupply server can start using the HIS module without purchasing more hardware.
- mSupply systems already have a lot of patient information stored in them. There is the potential to use this information (especially patient data) as the basis for a wider system than just the pharmacy.
- There seemed to be a gap for a system that does the basics reasonably well, as opposed to doing absolutely everything you could want in a hospital system. We’ve focused on:
- Patient information (including next of kin, birth mother, a photo)
- Inpatient admissions (but designed in a way that it can be expanded to handle outpatient consultations easily in the future)
- ICD 10 disease coding for each admission with multiple codes for each admission.
- Discharge status (the usual: “absconded”, “unsure”, “right as rain”)
- Births, including multiple births.
Important: We aren’t abandoning pharmaceutical supply chain software. We’re still fully committed to taking mSupply forward as the best solution for pharmaceutical warehouses and hospitals in developing countries, but at the same time we think the experience we’ve gained will benefit everyone.
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