Malaria Treatment & Prevention
Mobile Phone-based Inventory Management
Access to effective antimalarials remains a significant barrier to improving health outcomes in many malaria endemic countries. The exponential growth of the mobile phone market worldwide has created several new opportunities to improve health outcomes. A recent study published in the Malaria Journal evaluated the use of mobile phone-based text messaging to improve antimalarial inventory management (http://www.malariajournal.com/content/9/1/298). The study called “SMS for Life,” was carried out by the Tanzanian Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, The Roll Back Malaria Partnership, Novartis Pharma AG, Vodafone and IBM. It was carried out in three rural districts in three different malaria-endemic zones of Tanzania. The objective was to record and communicate stock levels of artemisinin-based combination therapies and injectable quinine between remote health facilities and Zonal Medical Stores.
On average, stock reports were reported daily and the text-based inventory data was found to be 94% accurate. In one district, all antimalarial stockouts were eliminated within 8 weeks of the 21-week study and overall, ACT stock increased by 64% and quinine stocks increased by 36% in the three districts.
Have you heard of similar mobile phone-based strategies for improving inventory management? Would such a model work in regions where you are located or have worked?
Attached resource:
David Bell
Kileken,
RapidSMS is a UNICEF-developed platform that can have similar capabilities, and includes reporting of disease rates, diagnostic outcomoes etc (being used on a limited scale in Uganda for malaria by MoH, Earth Institute, FIND and others (try Evan Lee at FIND). Both Magagascar and Zanzibar have working systems based on other models, that cover resutls and I presume inventory management. Zanzibar puts out good annual reports on this. Can send a Zanzibar report and RapidSMS summary but hte upload gismo is not working. David
8:05 AM, 6 Jan 2011 | Permalink
Ida-Alexandra Humuza-de Cordier
Hi
Indeed that kind of system work well. The lifesense group a south african company has develloped a similar system with mobile phone. But transmission of the data won t be via sms because it s too costly. We' ll be able to collect patient record, stock record, sales, and of course deseases. We attend to lauch the system inthe health posts in rwanda beginning this year. A pilot was ran in kenya last year and was very successful.
Ida
8:48 AM, 6 Jan 2011 | Permalink
Anup Akkihal
Dear Kileken,
You might find this mobile inventory management tool useful:
http://logistimo.com
It is being used in rural Indian clinics and urban hospitals to minimize stockouts.
Thanks,
Anup
3:15 AM, 7 Jan 2011 | Permalink
Awash Teklehaimanot
I agree with David of the potential use of Mobile phones for monitoring and evaluation of case management. The Earth Institute, Columbia University is using the RapidSMS platform for diagnosis and treatment of malaria and other prevalent diseases by community Health workers in the Millennium Villages. For details, please contact matt Berg
Regards,
Awash
2:39 PM, 7 Jan 2011 | Permalink
Junior Bazile
I have not heard of such use of mobile phone before but I agree that it's a tremendous useful way to give feedback and reports in real life. The pharmacist, CHW in very remote areas can stay in touch with other healthcare professional and even government officials easily.
Bazile
8:44 AM, 9 Jan 2011 | Permalink
Kenneth Rudd
FYI, there are now many initiatives to utilize mobile phones as a way to track and even provide sorts of “telemedicine” and we will likely see more as in more and more places the infrastructure for mobile phone technology is in places where there won’t be internet access for a long time to come if ever. I even saw a mounting device where smartphones can be mounted onto microscopes such that images can be sent via SMS.
-Kenny
4:43 PM, 11 May 2012 | Permalink