Development of Web Application for Medical Supply Management in Chiangkhan Hospital, Loei Province

Abstract

Background: Development of a web application for medical supply management was an extension of the previous StockDB program, which no longer met the needs of increased usage volume. This could serve as a tool for managing medical supplies, responding to working conditions in procurement and dispensing of medical supplies to various units, controlling the value of medical supply disbursement, generating reports, and regulating the medical supply procurement to comply with the fiscal and financial management plan of the hospitals.

Objectives: To develop a web application for medical supply management and evaluate the acceptance of stakeholders in using the web application for managing the medical supplies.

Methods: This research was an action research conducted in one cycle, consisting of planning, implementation, observation of results, and reflection on results. A focus group discussion was conducted to review the problems and find the ways for developing a web application.  Subsequently the application was developed and tested at Chiangkhan Hospital and the sub-district health promoting hospitals in Chiangkhan District, and was evaluated over a 2-month period.  The research tools included questions for focus group discussion and the evaluation form for the acceptance of the web application usage.  The data was collected from 12 web application developers and 61 users and evaluators in Chiangkhan District, Loei Province, from March to August 2024.

Results: The development of a web application for medical supply management was carried out through a literature review and focus group discussions regarding the stakeholders’ needs and development opportunities. The obtained information was used for planning and developing the web application, conducting the plan and observing the results. This led to the implementation at the local level and evaluated by users. The evaluation results from the target groups showed that 80.33% of the users were female with an average age of 36.72 years (S.D.=10.05). They were registered nurses (50.82%) and pharmacists/pharmacy technicians (21.31%), with a bachelor's degree of 83.61% and an average work experience of 13.90 years (S.D.=9.89). The assessment of acceptance in four dimensions included: 1) design and layout (high; Mean=4.20, S.D.=0.45), 2) efficiency/stability in use (highest; Mean=4.26, S.D.=0.38), 3) benefits to work (very high; Mean=4.31, S.D.=0.36), and 4) overall acceptance of use (highest; Mean=4.34, S.D.=0.51).

Conclusions:  Developing a web application for medical supply management based on the information from literature review and focus group discussions resulted in more efficient, convenient and easy ways to manage drugs and medical supplies than using the previous program, in the aspects of selection, procurement, receipt inspection, control/storage, dispensing, reporting, and monitoring as well as the overall value of drug and medical supply management. The acceptance of the users was rated at the highest level.