Uganda has implemented DHIS2 to support health commodity consumption reporting throughout the public health system. Every month, personnel at each hospital’s or health clinic’s pharmacy department fill in data on consumption, end-balance, etc (you can see an example of the forms used for this here, by selecting Sierra Leone as the organization unit, "Life-Saving Commodities" as data set, and any time period). The reports are used by warehouses to determine how many medicines and other medical equipment to be shipped to hospitals and clinics for the next month.
As an increasing number of health facilities have access to computers or smartphones, the Ministry now wants an application where health workers can register information on the dispensing of commodities. That is, each time someone comes to collect a certain amount of a commodity, the personnel at the pharmacy storage should be able to register the transaction in the application. The application should keep track of these transactions by using the DHIS2 API to store the number of commodities left. It would also be useful for the users to see previous transactions and the current stock-balance for the commodities.
Figure 1 - Current dispensing and reporting system
Figure 2 - Envisioned, new dispensing system
The health workers have access to either desktop computers or smartphones. Mobile 3G or 4G network coverage is good, but connectivity can be slow and unstable throughout the day.
When dispensing a commodity, the pharmacy storage worker should register:
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Name of commodity (from a predefined list in the system).
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Amount dispensed in a relevant unit (packs, bottles, pills, etc.).
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Name and department of the person collecting the commodity.
Comments added
A data set (aggregate) is already configured to be used for storing consumption and stock data. The set is named "Life-Saving Commodities" and can be found in the Data Entry app.
All elements in the data set can be accessed, modified and updated using the API. See the documentation.