Background
Countries impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic have seen their health systems overwhelmed by the number of patients requiring care and ensuring adequate availability of supplies like personal protective equipment (PPE), diagnostic equipment like test kits and clinical care equipment like oxygen therapy, ventilators etc. As LMICs in Africa, Asia and Mesoamerica prepare to respond to a similar surge in patient load, they will need to quickly mobilize capacity to effectively manage their supply chains to deliver an uninterrupted supply of commodities. An electronic tool can help with real-time management of these supplies.
Solution
The Clinton Health Access Initiative (www.clintonhealthaccess.org) (CHAI), VillageReach (www.villagereach.org) and SolDevelo (https://www.soldevelo.com) are working together to create a standalone, rapidly deployable, cloud-based, free-to-use order, stock management and visibility system using OpenLMIS (www.openlmis.org) to achieve end to end visibility and management of COVID-19 commodities.
This system is not meant to replace any existing functional electronic logistics information management systems (eLMIS) that countries might be using. Instead, it is offered as a standalone tool specifically for COVID so that countries do not need to mobilise resources to adapt their existing eLMIS to COVID or make changes that may cause disruption or break their routine supply chain tools.
OpenLMIS, a designated Global Good, is an open source, free to use eLMIS that has been deployed at over 11,000 facilities across eight countries in Africa. The global core team (CHAI’s Global Information Systems Team, VillageReach and SolDevelo) will configure OpenLMIS to create a lightweight COVID-specific health facility stock management and requisitioning tool that will require minimal training and in-country infrastructure and can be rapidly deployed. With the support of CHAI’s country teams, we will provide web-based trainings to system administrators, master users and other key personnel and adopt the train-the-trainer approach to achieve quick implementation at scale.
The OpenLMIS COVID Reference System can be accessed here: https://covid-ref.openlmis.org/#!/home
Please use the login credentials listed on the Users page for role-based access
The MVP system will be configured with standardized workflows for COVID-19 commodity management, to minimize setup and deployment time, and will include support for the following workflows:
Stock management from supply depot/warehouse to facility level
Manage requisitions from and replenishments to facilities
Proof of delivery to track shipments and order fulfilment
Ventilator location and operational status monitoring and reporting
Dashboard and reports for national, sub-national and facility level users – stock on hand and consumption trends
Based on technical feasibility assessment – Interoperability with warehouse management system to enable requisition, order creation, order fulfillment and proof of delivery
Please follow the links below to see various reference process workflows
We are in the process of developing a number of templates to support data collection, document process flows and assist with deployment and post-deployment activities:
Deployment guidance overview document [coming soon]
Implementation Team: provides guidance on the makeup of country implementation team and roles and responsibilities of each member
Response Workflows : Business process workflow documentation
Templates for data gathering: These can help country teams to collect master data (listed below) in a format suitable for easy upload onto the OpenLMIS COVID instance. See attachment at the end of this section.
Facility master list
Location/Geography master list
Product master list
Equipment master list
Supply lines master list
User roles/profiles and access rights [coming soon]
List of standard reports [coming soon]
Scripts for User Acceptance Testing (UAT) [coming soon]
Reference training materials [coming soon]
Bug report template, reporting guidelines and contact information [coming soon]
Reference system documentation [coming soon]
Any questions or feedback contact:
Gaurav Bhattacharya (gbhattacharya@clintonhealthaccess.org)
Satish Choudhury (schoudhury@clintonhealthaccess.org)
Wes Brown (wes.brown@villagereach.org)
Have a question about OpenLMIS? Want to learn more? Visit openlmis.org, or contact info@openlmis.org
