Thesis Abstract

Abstract
The Drug Procurement and Institution Tracking System (DPITS) is a comprehensive software solution designed to streamline the process of drug procurement and tracking within healthcare institutions. This system aims to address the challenges faced by healthcare facilities in managing their drug inventory effectively and ensuring timely procurement of essential medications. The DPITS offers a user-friendly interface that allows healthcare institutions to create, track, and manage drug purchase orders efficiently. Through this system, institutions can maintain a centralized database of vendors, enabling them to easily compare prices and select the most cost-effective suppliers. Additionally, DPITS provides real-time updates on drug availability and expiration dates, helping to prevent stockouts and reduce wastage. One of the key features of the DPITS is its ability to generate comprehensive reports on drug usage, procurement costs, and inventory levels. By analyzing this data, healthcare institutions can make informed decisions about their drug procurement strategies, ensuring that they are able to meet patient needs while optimizing costs. Moreover, the system includes alerts and notifications to remind staff about expiring medications and pending purchase orders, reducing the risk of medication errors and delays in treatment. The DPITS also enhances transparency and accountability in drug procurement processes by providing a detailed audit trail of all transactions. This feature helps institutions to track the movement of drugs within their facilities, identify discrepancies, and prevent theft or misuse of medications. Furthermore, the system supports compliance with regulatory requirements by maintaining accurate records of drug procurement and usage, which can be easily accessed during inspections or audits. Overall, the Drug Procurement and Institution Tracking System offers a comprehensive solution to the challenges faced by healthcare institutions in managing their drug supply chain. By improving efficiency, reducing costs, and ensuring compliance with regulatory standards, this system can help to enhance the quality of patient care and optimize the use of resources within healthcare facilities.

Thesis Overview

INTRODUCTION

1.1 BACKGROUND OF STUDY

Computerization is defined as the control of processes by computers and its peripherals. Today it would be difficult to think of any process, business or action that could not have profited from the numerous benefits of the computer system. Controlling process or devices with computer started long ago since the invention of computer. In the 20th century inventors tried to make processes easier with the use of computers. Secondly computerization has been greatly applied or used in controlling process that requires frequent action such as drug procurement, drug management, drug tracking and drug distributions in hospital management information system in pharmacy departments of hospitals.This project which is drug procurement and distribution tracking system provides a computer based information management system in a Pharmacy Department of the University of Nigerian Teaching Hospital (UNTH) Enugu by designing a cost effective, user friendly application, incorporating key attributes of data integrity and system security suitable for use in the pharmacy department of the hospital using Microsoft Access software in developing the database and visual basic as the programming language. The overall aim of this project is to optimize time and material in the processing of data needed for effective operation of large pharmacy department of a hospital. By this approach, data integrity, data redundancy, and consistency will be ensured. Drugs are the chemical substances that are administered to patients for curative purposes and prophylaxis. It can also be known as a medicine, because it is the essential part of peoples care. The ability of the computer to store and retrieve information at a very fast and efficient rate makes its application useful in management operations. Drug management involves drug procurement, drug distribution, drug tracking and its information management. Drug distribution is concerned with distribution of drugs within the different medical units or departments in a hospital, while drug procurement is concerned with the purchasing activities of the drugs by the pharmacy department of the hospital. In the same vein, drug tracking is concern with the continuous monitoring of the actual quantity of drugs held in the hospital pharmacy or any other drug warehouse /store. It also controls the stock level.Pharmaceutical unit in a hospital is concerned with drug management activities. They carry out the responsibility of making appropriate selection and drugs used by formulating an annual, monthly, weekly or daily list of drugs requirement and management reports. However, in some hospitals today, some pharmacists still use the manual system of operation which can lead to inappropriate drug management errors due to problems of handling voluminous file within a short period of time. This could make data to be easily inaccessible and also delivery of drugs can lead to misplacement of patients’ files.