OpenLMIS COVID-19 Edition

Owned by Rebecca Alban (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Oct 26, 2020 by Gaurav Bhattacharya (Unlicensed)
4 min read

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 intended 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) has configured OpenLMIS to create a lightweight COVID-specific health facility stock management and requisitioning tool that requires minimal training and in-country infrastructure and can be rapidly deployed. With the support of CHAI’s country teams, we 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.

 

OpenLMIS for COVID Demo

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

A brief introductory demo video for OpenLMIS- COVID19 Edition is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHG55mE-rqE&t=16s



MVP Product Features/Capabilities

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

 

Milestones And Timelines



Reference Process Flows

Please follow the links below to see various reference process workflows

Response Workflows

Stock Management

COVID Commodities Requisition

Equipment Management

Reports & Dashboards



Assets to Support Localisation and Deployment

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: 

  1. Consult the OpenLMIS- COVID19 Edition Deployment Guidance (document attached below). This document describes a wide range of implementation considerations, including:

    1. Implementation planning

    2. Deployment

    3. Training

    4. Costs

    5. System maintenance & monitoring

  2. Implementation Team: provides guidance on the makeup of country implementation team and roles and responsibilities of each member

  3. Response Workflows : Business process workflow documentation

  4. 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.

    1. Facility master list

    2. Location/Geography master list

    3. Product master list

    4. Equipment master list

    5. Supply lines master list

  5. User roles/profiles and access rights [coming soon]

  6. List of standard reports [coming soon]

  7. Scripts for User Acceptance Testing (UAT) [coming soon]

  8. Training Estimates

  9. Reference training materials [coming soon]

  10. Bug report template, reporting guidelines and contact information [coming soon]

  11. Reference system documentation [coming soon]


Contact Us!

For technical questions or feedback:

To express interest or more information about OpenLMIS COVID19- Edition:

 





Have a question about OpenLMIS? Want to learn more? Visit openlmis.org, or contact info@openlmis.org



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