Development of a chemical inventory system for the dental materials laboratory, Faculty of Dentistry, Prince of Songkla University

Abstract

         This chemical inventory program was designed to control the chemical management following the safety guidelines for laboratory in the Enhancement of safety practice of research laboratories in Thailand (ESPReL) with the support of the National Research Council of Thailand. This guideline requires information management, record-keeping, and reporting requirements related to remediation or management activities using chemicals. This study has explored the necessary chemical handling information and analyzed the data to create a chemical inventory program suitable for regulation of a laboratory with Microsoft Access. The procedure, working time, and number of the ESPReL checklists obtained on the chemical management systems using the program were compared with the earlier paper-base management systems.

         The results revealed that the program can reduce the procedure for chemical borrowing and returning from 7 to 4 steps and reduce the time spent on doing a chemical stock report from 15 minutes to 35 seconds. The number of ESPReL checklists on the chemical management systems increased from 45 items (in the year of 2018) to 71 items, representing a score of 89.2%, higher than the average for 85.0% of the ESPReL project. This development of a chemical inventory program, in addition to providing convenience and safety to warehouse administrators and chemical users, is also part of the preparation to reach laboratory safety standards in the future.