June 29, 2023
Medical products cover many items, from disposable syringes to expensive implants and surgical kits. These higher-value consumables make up the lion’s share of a hospital’s budget, so tracking medical inventory is crucial for efficient financial management.
Backed by healthcare domain knowledge and expertise, our specialists can develop and implement tailor-fit hospital management software for your healthcare facility.
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Hospital inventory management tools comprise three essential components:
Scheme title: Web/mobile app architecture
Data source: researchgate.net — A software architecture for inventory management system
blood centers use the tool
Our medical software developers created an inventory management solution for a med tech company. The tool collects, stores, and processes large blood volumes for labs and blood centers. The team also developed a separate module for uniting devices from different manufacturers in a station which streamlined device traceability.
accessible defibrillators
Itransition’s team developed a web app providing doctors, defibrillator owners, ambulance specialists, and admins with real-time data on defibrillators available nearby. The owners can register their device, access type (public or restricted), location, and status (in or out of service). In addition, our team enabled regular synchronization between the central database and the local ambulance systems.
Effective inventory management has always been a pain point for medical facilities. As a result, some vendors have developed full-scale systems to alleviate the challenge for healthcare organizations. Here are five platforms to consider:
The Salesforce Health Cloud platform facilitates healthcare operations and workflows, including medical facility inventory management. Authorized users can view all medicine and medical supplies items necessary for each patient visit and their location and are notified of any shortfalls to address in advance. They can request a transfer of the required medication or equipment from another provider's facility when needed. Users then capture product serial numbers on-site for order authorization and scan barcodes for more efficient inventory tracking. The solution is HIPAA and 21 CFR Part 11 compliant and supports advanced triaging.
A step-by-step implementation of a hospital inventory management project includes the following actions:
Requirements gathering & system design
Project planning
System development
System integrations
Data migration
Solution deployment
User training
Post-launch maintenance & support
Automated hospital inventory management offers providers a range of benefits that help solve critical industry challenges.
A hospital inventory management solution reduces excessive purchases "for a rainy day" and stockouts to a minimum and helps to keep increasing expenses at bay.
Inventory management software powered by healthcare IoT capabilities enables healthcare providers to track inventory and stock levels in real time.
Hospital administrators gain more control over inventory access and ensure that only authorized employees can view and handle certain information.
Automated inventory management allows clinicians and nurses to clearly view the key attributes of their tasks, namely who is responsible, what they should do, and when.
Advanced search functions and barcode scanning for data entry allow medical staff to find what they need much faster, which improves their productivity.
Automated monitoring of drug expiry dates minimizes medication waste, resulting in cost savings.
Such solutions let medical facilities keep track of inventory levels, detect patterns, and forecast demand. It helps prevent stockpiling and stockouts and lower hospital inventory costs.
Hospital inventory management solutions support multi-factor user authentication and comply with HIPAA to ensure data security.
Challenges
Implementation of hospital inventory management systems can require hefty investments.
Challenges
Solutions
Select an inventory management tool according to your practice needs and the available budget. Subscription-based solutions can be a good option for a limited budget as they don’t require high initial payments, but the TCO can grow in the long run. Meanwhile, a custom solution requiring higher initial investments can be more cost-efficient. Itransition’s experts can help you choose and implement a HIMS solution that fits your clinic best.
Challenges
Doctors and nurses often prepare charge captures and preference cards manually. As a result, it can cause inconsistencies and errors in the inventory management system.
Challenges
Solutions
Data quality should be verified before migrating inventory data to a new inventory management system. Assigning this task to doctors and nurses can be inefficient due to their excessive professional load and human factor limitations. Instead, healthcare inventory solution providers can review customer's data and identify incomplete or erroneous data and duplicates. Then the customer can fix those bugs effectively and swiftly.
Challenges
Without an inventory management solution, hospital employees have to spend much time creating progress reports manually, but this reporting method is prone to errors and erroneous conclusions.
Challenges
Solutions
A hospital inventory management solution provides automated report generation. Users can select necessary parameters and set a time frame to get insightful reports in minutes. Automated reports give clinicians more time to focus on their professional tasks, increasing productivity.
Challenges
As a rule, key system users can have difficulties during onboarding due to their lack of computer skills and resistance to change. They’ve learned how to manage inventory manually and have gotten used to the hurdles, and now with the new tool, they have to relearn.
Challenges
Solutions
HIMS tool providers offer user training and onboarding manuals for different user roles to smoothen the process. In addition, they stay with their customers post-launch to tackle any potential challenges with the inventory management system.
Providers and medical personnel deal with various challenges daily, and an effective inventory management system can help mitigate many of them and reduce their detrimental effects. Besides lowering the inventory cost, hospitals can allocate additional funds to solving other critical issues. A solid hospital inventory management solution helps improve the quality of patient care and streamline supply-related operations. If you need to bring your inventory management to a new level, Itransition’s experts are here to help.