In the UK, Sonar Informatics has produced a series of web-based solutions to sup- port the New Medicines Service (NMS), and other initiatives such as NHS (vascular) health checks and smoking cessation. A number of initiatives, managed by local Primary Care Trusts, are managed by Webstar, and have web-based forms and data entry screens. However, one of the barriers to full interface of these services with pharmacy systems is the lack of agreed datasets to support these services, and the fact that pharmacy system databases may not have the fi elds to support these data- sets. This is an area of ongoing discussion and development.
171 References
Conclusion
Pharmacy systems were developed over 30 years ago, primarily to keep records of medicines supplied and to generate dispensing labels for medicines packs. However, these systems now provide a range of functions to support new roles for pharmacists and the latest developments in pharmacy practice. Hospital pharmacy systems may be interfaced with a range of other systems such as hospital EHRs, EP systems, pharmacy automation and other systems. Pharmacy systems are a valuable source of data for generation of reports to meet the changing management needs of phar- macy service providers. However, it is important that the views of practicing phar- macists are taken into account when pharmacy systems are designed and developed.
Many other IT applications have been developed to support pharmacists with speci fi c services and tasks.
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175 S. Goundrey-Smith, Information Technology in Pharmacy,
DOI 10.1007/978-1-4471-2780-2_7, © Springer-Verlag London 2013
Introduction
Logistics – the management of the supply chain – is an essential part of any busi- ness, since the ability to supply the correct product is a pre-requisite to trade and failure to do so will lead to loss of revenue and customer dissatisfaction. While in the past, for example, following the Boots self-service case before the British High Court in 1953 [ 1 ] , it has been argued that medicines are not ordinary items of com- merce , they are commodities that are traded and therefore the principles of market demand and supply chain dynamics apply.
Since the development of modern IT systems, sophisticated technologies involv- ing barcode tracking of goods and automated picking and handling have become well-established in the freight, haulage, wholesale and retail sectors but, perhaps because of the “special” nature of medicines, they are at an earlier stage of adoption in the pharmaceutical industry and pharmacy supply chain .
The pharmaceutical industry’s supply chain, from manufacturer to patient, is highly fragmented and still makes little use of automatic identi fi cation and data capture techniques, such as barcodes and radio frequency product identi fi cation (RFID) . As such, it can learn from the experience in leading industries (the retail, automotive and other sectors), which have transformed their supply chains reaping huge ef fi ciency and security bene fi ts using such automated techniques.
The availability of a seamless pharmaceutical supply chain , where electronic tracking is possible to batch or even individual pack level will provide a range of possible solutions to current issues in pharmacy and medicines management:
• Automated supply and reduction of picking errors Greater ef fi ciency in the
• supply chain
Authentication of medicines and prevention of
• counterfeit medicines
Support for
• patient safety at the health service end of the supply chain Capability for
• batch recall alerts .
However, the ability to deliver these and other bene fi ts will not be feasible without the total commitment of the industry and the government to bring about
Barcodes and Logistics
176 7 Barcodes and Logistics
a harmonized and internationally agreed system. If this endeavour is not embraced, there is a high risk that other fragmented and less effective, solutions will be developed or imposed on the supply chain by politically-dominant stake- holders. This chapter will review the supply chain processes for pharmacy, the technologies that have been used in the supply chain, in particular barcode prod- uct identi fi cation , and how these technologies may be optimized to streamline the supply chain and deliver the potential bene fi ts mentioned above.