Hospital Inventory Management System: Features, Benefits, Tips

Hospital Inventory Management Software - ScienceSoft

With 18 years of experience in the healthcare IT industry, ScienceSoft offers consulting on hospital inventory management solutions.

Meet Hospital Inventory Management Software

Hospital inventory management software is aimed at supervising drugs and medical supplies in order to increase the efficiency of healthcare supply chains and reduce medication waste.

ScienceSoft’s Healthcare IT Consultant Alena Nikuliak shares her experience:

"The customers 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

Architecture

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 18 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.

Inventory automation

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

Set up an automatic replenishment process of key medical assets (medications, disposable assets, etc.) to avoid asset shortage.

Get detailed information on each medication.

Conduct a cycle count, monitor actual medical asset use, and get fact-based asset demand forecasts.

Monitor availability and a stock level of medical supplies.

Get notified of the supplies’ expiration dates.

Access automatically generated inventory discrepancy reports to keep track of the real use of medical supplies.

Leverage full solution functionality on a mobile device.

Want to Get Hospital Inventory Management Software?

ScienceSoft is ready to create a robust hospital inventory management solution that will help you streamline and automate your inventory management.

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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.

Integrations for custom hospital inventory management software - ScienceSoft

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

	Reduced hospital inventory costs due to medication usage cycle counting and inventory demand forecasting features.
	Increased medical staff efficiency due to fast search of the needed hospital inventory and automated data entry (for example, barcode or QR label scanning).
	Reduced risks of hospital stock-outs due to stock reports and automated medication and medical supply tracking.
	Reduced medication waste due to automatic monitoring of the medication expiration date.

When a Custom Hospital Inventory Management Solution Is the Best Option

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 customers, ScienceSoft developed an electronic medication administration record (EMAR) system. Software allows ordering medication refills in real time, track medication delivery, monitor narcotic count, etc.

Implementation of a Hospital Inventory Management Solution

With 18 years in the healthcare IT industry, ScienceSoft knows the specifics of hospital inventory management solutions inside out.

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.

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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.

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About ScienceSoft

ScienceSoft is a global IT consulting and IT services company headquartered in McKinney, TX, US. For over 18 years, we have been providing healthcare IT consulting services for our customers to leverage value-driving solutions for healthcare.