How do we automate pharmacy and supplies stock? — answered by Engineer Saeed Baatiah
Stock automation in healthcare carries an extra dimension: expiry dates. A useful system alerts on three things rather than one: quantity below the reorder point, approaching expiry within a window you set so you can use it rather than destroy it, and slow-moving items tying up your cash. And automatic deduction on dispensing prevents the gap between book stock and actual stock.
Expiry dates are what separates healthcare stock from retail stock, and they are the largest source of silent loss. Alerting must cover three conditions rather than one: quantity below the reorder point, approaching expiry within a window you set according to dispensing speed so you can use it rather than destroy it, and slow-moving items that tie up cash and near expiry at the same time.
And the gap between book stock and actual stock is the second problem, caused by dispensing without recording. The fix is automatic deduction at the moment of dispensing from the prescription system rather than a separate end-of-day entry — separate entry gets forgotten, deferred and estimated. Add a periodic count of high-value items only rather than the whole inventory, since a full count consumes a day and is perpetually postponed.
And the reorder point is calculated rather than guessed: average daily dispensing × supplier lead time + a safety margin. An item taking two weeks to arrive needs a far higher threshold than one arriving in two days, and a single uniform threshold across all items is exactly what leaves you out of one thing and overstocked with another.
- Three alerts: quantity, approaching expiry, slow-moving
- Automatic deduction at dispensing, not a separate end-of-day entry
- Reorder point = daily dispensing × lead time + margin
- Periodic counts of high-value items, not the whole inventory