Date: Sept 16
Participants: Linus Odomeme (Pharmacist, National Coordinator for Nigeria Supply Chain,. Just retired but providing strategic support/consultancy services), Thobekile Nxumalo (ARC, supply chain technical team), Rebecca Alban (Unlicensed) Wesley Brown
Background: Rebecca held an initial call with Thombi from the Africa Resource Center, who are providing TA to the Nigerian govt about their supply chain strategy and LMIS approach. They are interested in learning more about OpenLMIS, particularly re: sustainability and ownership of the product
Notes:
Linus: Have been struggling with Navision as their National LMIS; wanting to look at alternative to close the gaps, many have been in Excel; the goal is to see how OpenLMIS can interoperate with the existing Navision
Nigeria has developed a unique LMIS over the years; they have a lot of extra functionalities to tackle local problems. They have functionalities that deal with product leakage (for high value products), product quality, theft, etc. From 2015-2016 developed functionalities (not the tool) and hosted them; in 2016 there was a struggle to choose the right tool and lots of controversy over which one to choose. All partners wanted to market their own. They went with Navision as it was promoted by Unicef. NPHCDA’s mandate was to scale up Navision for Malaria, TB, HIV/TB, Nuturition, etc. but as this happened they realized that the interface (had migrated?) ; the technical content was just basic- wasnt meeting program needs, and was very costly. frustrated. The problems they are seeign are not likely to be resolved so they are looking for replacement. Assessment done last year the LMIS can only take care of 30% of the user requirements and many programs rejected it because it doesn't meet their needs (they don't use it).
Country wants to integrate with essential medicines--states manage these. Dont expect that the tool would provide visibility there; but if it can interoperate with states to get this info that would be great. This would be too complicated to get involved with since there are so many states. but they do want to extract some info about their consumption. Most of them are using MSupply and we want to be able to pick the data from those
Wes: sounds like there is a fairly well established process so we need to carve out a space to plug OpenLMIS into that infrastructure. It is definately possible to connect with mSupply, would ened more specifics to determine ‘how’. We usually like to use standards based approach versus a direct connection
Current scope: HIV, TB, Malaria, Reproductive health, MCH (not vaccines), remaining program is nutrition which has not been linked. Any other program that comes at the national level. If eventauly covid control becomes a program they would also want to do that
His role is to source for what can work and handover to govt to continue the discussion
Linus: local features that have been developed over the years would need to be integrated, since everyone is used to doing these processes
local feature: To prevent leakages, they triangulate patient data with consumption data and is presented on a dashboard. For example, last year there was a scandal with GF in the malaria products. claim that 19million doses were used but only 7 million cases. the patient data can come from DHIS2. *another use case for getting patient data into DHIS2
Local feature: They also developed the Months of Stock they use a calculation of how long your stock will last; ‘months of stockover’ brings into effect the expiry concept.
Wes: The difficulties that you are describing sound like difficulties configuring navision; OpenLMIS can meet the high level features that you are describing. It does not have patient data but can mix with DHIS2. OpenLMIS’s deep functionality is via the facility request--approval--review--and order that sent back to the facility.
Strengths: it is online, so facilities can enter data
Linus’s role is to see if the requirements are met; they do not see funding as a problem because all programs are invested in additional software to help their problems.
Follow up actions:
Thobekile to share the user requirements list with Rebecca for us to analyse