Kemsa launches app to track drugs deliveries to hospitals

The Kenya Medical Supplies Authority will now deliver family planning commodities and other essential medicines and supplies to health facilities using an application.

Kemsa on Tuesday rolled out the use of the Electronic Proof of Deliveries  application to enhance efficiency and effectiveness in delivery.

The authority received support from the United Nations Population Fund  to develop the application, which recently received a global award in the Global Health Supply Chain summit, as the best innovative health supply chain solution using best practices in 2021.

The e-POD app has GPS capabilities to ensure commodities are delivered to the correct health facilities, and also has a receipt and acknowledgement modules for the facility to accept receipt of commodities delivered in their right quantities.

The application also monitors order turnaround time, which helps to avert delays in delivery that can cause stock-out of essential health commodities at the facility level.

“Prompt delivery of commodities and supplies has been one of the significant challenges we have been experiencing as an organisation. With the introduction of this new system, we will be able to deliver supplies to health facilities effectively and in an efficient manner,” acting Kemsa CEO Edward Njoroge said.

“The application will help us to ensure commodities are delivered in the correct health facilities, in the right quantities and at the right time. This will in turn help us to facilitate timely payments to our suppliers, transporters and timely billing to development partners supporting FP [family planning] programmes,” Njoroge added.

The e-POD app is among one of two innovations developed with support from UNFPA, which are aimed at improving the supply chain for more efficient delivery of family planning commodities.

In 2019, UNFPA in partnership with HealthStrat began the roll-out of Qualipharm, a mobile-based digital reporting tool that tracks consumption of family planning commodities at a county and subcounty and facility level.

The app is loaded onto tablets distributed to commodity managers, including pharmacists and commodity managers at public health facilities, who use it to electronically take stock of commodities consumed during the period as well as placing new orders.

The adoption and use of the digitised, mobile-based commodity reporting solutions at the facility level provides an end to end visibility of commodities whilst improving the quality of data reported.

“The introduction of e-POD and Qualipharm applications is set to be a game changer not only for the healthcare staff but also for the citizens who rely on public health facilities to access lifesaving health commodities, including family planning,” UNFPA representative Dr Ademola Olajide said.

“Provision of Family planning commodities contributes to eliminating unintended pregnancies that eventually leads to reduction of maternal and newborn mortality as well as improving the health and well-being of women and children,” Olajide added.

The e-POD app is part of the measures taken by the Kemsa Board of Directors to make the authority a centre of excellence.

The authority is working with various stakeholders such as county governments and development partners to provide affordable and quality products within the universal health coverage agenda. 

Universal access to sexual and reproductive health services requires strong supply chain system to deliver lifesaving reproductive health commodities.

-Edited by SKanyara