Fast access to appropriate drugs can significantly improve the patient outcome. That is particularly the case when prospective patients live in remote communities where stock levels and distribution channels are not being monitored due to the lack of basic infrastructures.

Together with Pfizer and NGO International Health Partners (IHP), Vodafone designed and managed a seven-month commercial pilot to monitor disease rates and the top ten health events, plus drug stocks and expiry dates for over twenty medicines in The Gambia.

Its objective was to collect and share real-time information about stock levels for each drug in order to reduce stock-outs, improve supply chain efficiencies and, ultimately, ensure treatments were distributed accurately and swiftly. Due to the success of the pilot, SMS for Health is now run as an ongoing project.

Workflow Summary

Benefits

• Real-time information about stock levels reduces stock-outs and improves supply chain efficiencies
• It also facilitates demand forecasting, and improves patient access to drugs
• Monitoring expiry dates reduces wastage, eliminates out-of-date drugs from the system, and enables efficient stock redistribution
• Analysing disease rates and the top ten health events generates data to support disease prioritisation, budget forecasting and crucial treatment statistics
• Advance visibility of low stock levels allows for a more proactive distribution strategy

Workflow description

Managers or head clinicians for each of the health facilities participating, use their mobile phones to text through stock levels for each of the medicines being monitored. They do this each week, following a broadcast reminder that is sent centrally from ‘SMS for Health’. If the clinicians fail to send their data, they are sent reminder texts. Data from each remote site is aggregated and real-time reports are delivered to the Director of Clinical Services and Chief Pharmacist via the internet.

These reports are used by the National Pharmacy Store to order and redistribute field medicines. The Ministry of Health can use this information to review drug consumption rates in order to predict key health events – and take the necessary measures to try to prevent them, or make treatment available in the right locations faster.

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