HIS Reports- get excited now.

Adrian has just finished our first stab at a reporting screen for our HIS module in mSupply.
We’re sorry- normal humans shouldn’t get excited about this sort of thing. We need help.

Here’s where we’re up to.

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  1. Summary
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  2. Detail
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  3. Occupancy
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  4. Avg Lgth of Stay
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  5. Bed days / ward

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.

Vaccine Vial Monitoring in mSupply

Recently we went added some features to mSupply to make it more useful for monitoring and issuing vaccines that use vaccine vial monitors (VVMs).
In summary:

• For each batch of vaccines you can record the VVM status. mSupply keeps a historical record of each entry, and displays the current status in the list of batches in stock on the stock tab of the item details window.
• For a particular store you can turn on a preference that sorts the list of batches (when issuing goods) in order of VVM status rather than expiry date. So mSupply changes from being “FEFO” (First Expiry First Out) to being “FSFO” (First vvm Status First Out)
• for a brief overview of using VVMs, see the WHO article What is VVM and how does it work

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  Preferences
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  Updating Status
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  Batches

Securing connections to the mSupply web interface

We have been testing using SSL to connect to the mSupply web server, and are pleased to say it is working well. SSL means that all data (especially important being your mSupply log-on user name and password) are encrypted during transmission. If you are running an mSupply web server and wish to use SSL for connections, please contact us for instructions. This can be done by us using remote access. If you use a self-signed certificate there is no charge. If you want to purchase a "proper" certificate then the costs are usually around USD50 per year.

The Transaction Sidebar: not an original idea, but a good one...

OK, so maybe the idea came from iTunes. No matter, it’s still a good idea, and users of version 3 have been loving the transactions side bar.

Here’s a breakdown of the good bits….

The Sticky bits…

* The thing to remember is that the transaction type section of the sidebar is sticky – that is, it remembers which type you’ve clicked on until you click on a different type.

• Clicking the Find button will bring up the standard find window.
• The My transactions section is useful for finding transactions you’ve entered.

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