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Custom Hospital Inventory Management System
Features, Benefits, Tips
With 19 years of experience in the healthcare IT industry, ScienceSoft designs and implements hospital inventory management solutions.
Meet Hospital Inventory Management Software
Hospital inventory management software is aimed at supervising drugs and medical supplies to increase the efficiency of healthcare supply chains and reduce medication waste.
Custom hospital inventory management software offers further advantages: e.g., its complete integration with the existing IT environment, a customized approach to user roles and permissions, automated reordering of medications and disposables based on predefined algorithms.
The clients I work with say that after implementation of hospital inventory management software they notice multiple positive changes. Automation of routine tasks helps to overcome the drawbacks and limitations like low speed of asset tracking, human errors, high paperwork load. Also, the records on hospital inventory and durable assets are regularly and accurately updated, which contributes to the speed and quality of hospital inventory management.
Architecture of a Medical Inventory Management System
- RFID tags. Optional in hospital inventory management solutions. They can be attached to any physical item. Each RFID tag has an ID carrying the specific inventory item data. Mostly, healthcare organizations use passive kind of RFID tags, because they are much cheaper than the active ones due to the absence of their own power supply. The usage of RFID tags is feasible for expensive items and high-alert medications.
- RFID readers. They use radio waves to simultaneously obtain the data from the number of tags over distance and send it to the cloud or on-premises hospital inventory management solution for storing and processing.
- EHR. The cloud or on-premises hospital inventory management solution may send data related to patients to a hospital EHR system.
- Mobile hospital app. To use hospital inventory management functionality or its part on-the-go.
Hospital Inventory Management Software: Key Features
Based on our 19 years of experience of collaboration with healthcare organizations, ScienceSoft has designed a list of common hospital inventory management software features:
Medication management
- Drug information (ID, price, recommended dosage, adverse effects, etc.) management.
- Medication usage cycle counting for demand forecasting.
- Medication distribution control.
Medical supply management
- Medical supply information (ID, price, intended use description, etc.) management.
- Medical supply usage cycle counting for demand forecasting.
- Medical supply distribution control.
Medical equipment management
- Equipment usage control and analytics.
- Automated monitoring of equipment maintenance dates.
Stock levels tracking
- Medication/medical supply live tracking.
- Medication/medical supply stock reports and audits.
- A chatbot to notify on supply levels.
- Automated order placement.
- Medication and medical supply costs monitoring.
- Automated expiration dates control.
Security and compliance monitoring
- Discrepancy reports based on the predefined rules.
- Restricted access to the system.
How It Can Look and Work
Valuable Integrations for Hospital Inventory Management System
To improve the efficiency of medical inventory management, avoid storage of fragmented inventory information, and track asset use, ScienceSoft often integrates the hospital inventory management software with Electronic Health Records system (EHR or EMR), a mobile hospital app for hospital staff, hospital procurement software, and digital medication issue registries.
How to Develop Hospital Inventory Management Software
- Analyzing the inventory management processes within a healthcare organization and planning the solution.
- Outlining the needs of nursing staff and hospital inventory managers, defining the requirements of the medical organization.
- Identifying asset types to be RFID tagged and designing the feature set for medication tracking, supply management, stock levels tracking, etc.
- Planning the software development project, including key steps and milestones, expected KPIs, and more.
- Creating UI and UX design with the needs of medical staff in mind.
- Developing and testing the software in iterations, implementing security features like user identity management, role-based access to procurement and stock data, etc.
- Integrating the hospital inventory management software with other healthcare IT systems (e.g., EHR, procurement software).
- Installing RFID readers in the medical facility and attaching or embedding RFID tags to the assets.
- Conducting user acceptance testing and training for medical and administrative staff.
- Launching, supporting, and maintaining the software.
What Determines Success of Medical Inventory Management Software
If you need to get value from your hospital inventory management software fast, ScienceSoft's consultants recommend that you pay attention to the following aspects:
Mobile device compatibility
To make a hospital inventory management system highly available and avoid additional costs on the purchase of special equipment (for example, barcode readers).
Strong security
To ensure the safety of PHI in the integrated hospital inventory management solution and compliance with HIPAA/HITECH.
Hospital Inventory Management Software: Financial Benefits
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Reduced hospital inventory costs due to medication usage cycle counting and inventory demand forecasting features. |
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Increased medical staff efficiency due to fast search of the needed hospital inventory and automated data entry (for example, barcode or QR label scanning). |
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Reduced risks of hospital stock-outs due to stock reports and automated medication and medical supply tracking. |
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Reduced medication waste due to automatic monitoring of the medication expiration date. |
When a Custom Hospital Inventory Management Solution Is the Best Option
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You should go for a custom solution if your healthcare organization needs a multifunctional hospital inventory management solution to optimize supply processes, avoid spoilage of medicines, identify thefts, automate inventory tasks, etc. For example, for one of our clients, ScienceSoft developed an electronic medication administration record (EMAR) system. Software allows ordering medication refills in real time, track medication delivery, monitor narcotic count, etc. |
How Much Does It Cost to Build a Hospital Inventory Management System?
For hospital inventory software, major cost drivers include:
- System type: software only vs. software and hardware.
- Functional scope.
- Non-functional requirements (e.g., availability, performance, security).
- Compliance requirements (e.g., HIPAA).
- Uniqueness and complexity of UX/UI design.
- Number of user roles.
- Scope and complexity of integrations.
- Complexity of data migration procedures, if relevant.
In ScienceSoft's experience, the development costs of a hospital inventory management system range from $90,000 to $400,000+.
$90,000-$250,000
For a solution of average complexity.
$250,000-$400,000+
For a highly complex software-hardware system featuring advanced analytics.
See Our Medical Inventory Software Expertise in Action
Implementation of a Hospital Inventory Management Solution
With 19 years in the healthcare IT industry, ScienceSoft knows the specifics of hospital inventory management solutions inside out. Our mission is to drive your project success despite time and budget constraints, as well as changing requirements.
Hospital inventory management consulting
- Analyzing your hospital inventory management needs.
- Deciding on an optimal set of hospital inventory management features.
- Assisting with choosing feasible integrations.
- Creating a pragmatic hospital inventory management implementation strategy.
- Forming a hospital inventory management design concept for rapid user adoption.
Hospital inventory management implementation
- Business analysis.
- Hospital inventory management development planning, execution and management.
- QA planning, execution and management.
- Integration with existing healthcare solutions.
- User training.
- Continuous support, if requested.
What makes ScienceSoft different
We achieve project success no matter what
ScienceSoft does not pass mere project administration off as project management, which, unfortunately, often happens on the market. We practice real project management, achieving project success for our clients no matter what.
About ScienceSoft
ScienceSoft is a global IT consulting and IT services company headquartered in McKinney, TX, US. For over 19 years, we have been providing healthcare IT consulting services for our clients to leverage value-driving solutions for healthcare.