State of the Art: 5 Must-Include Features for Drug Inventory Management Software
Modern pharmacies need to be efficient if they are to prevail against the competition. At the same time, shortcuts and compromises can never be accepted, since patients can otherwise be endangered.
Achieving the right balance becomes a lot easier once high-quality tools and systems are put in place. Deploying advanced drug inventory management software is a proven way to streamline important processes and help an entire pharmacy run more reliably.
Fortunately, modern medication packaging is designed to aid drug inventory management. Whilst some packaging now includes an RFID tag for automatic tracking, most packaging at least has a unique barcode to be scanned. A barcode scanner can offer numerous benefits for drug inventory management. Barcode scanners facilitate efficient tracking and traceability of medications throughout their lifecycle. By scanning barcodes at various stages – from procurement to dispensing – healthcare professionals can easily monitor movement within the supply chain and identify any discrepancies or potential issues.
Choosing the right inventory management software for a given pharmacy will always be an important step. The five features that follow should be included in any system worth considering.
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Support for Multiple Stocking Points
Researchers have recognized for decades that distribution networks with multiple stocking points are the most challenging to manage. Many pharmacies today belong to companies with dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of individual presences.
Inventory management systems that are designed from the ground up to accommodate many stocking points help simplify even the most complex arrangements. Compared to traditional tools and processes, modern software applications are far better equipped to overcome all the associated challenges.
It will always be best to opt for an inventory management platform that can handle multiple stocking points, regardless of the situation at the moment. At the very least, this will provide some level of potentially useful future-proofing.
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Vendor Integration
Virtually all pharmacies today rely to some extent on each of many vendors and suppliers. Inventory management systems that can normalize interactions with each inevitably make everyday operations simpler.
That will make it possible to query and work with every supplier in the same basic way. This can cut down greatly on the amount of time spent accounting for differences instead of actually making progress.
To provide this level of support, an inventory management system must be able to integrate deeply with each vendor’s application programming interfaces and other points of interaction. Pharmacies always benefit from this type of accommodation even when existing processes seem generally satisfactory.
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Detailed Reporting
Simply keeping track of inventory levels is important, but having access to more related information is always better. Reports that cover details like rates of change and observed pricing fluctuations are always more revealing than simpler ones.
Fortunately, most drug inventory management platforms now go far beyond such basics. It can still be helpful to compare the reporting features of each system under consideration.
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Ordering Process Tracking
When an order gets stuck for any length of time at any stage of processing and fulfillment, an entire pharmacy fails to live up to its responsibilities. Systems that track orders from placement through to pickup make it much easier to identify and resolve such issues before they become bigger problems. Some platforms even generate statistics that make it simpler to figure out which organizing parts inventory of the process needs to be improved or made more reliable.
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Replenishment
Stocking up on inventory can be time-consuming, but a well-designed inventory management system should speed things up considerably. Many systems can estimate future needs based on recent depletion rates and make related suggestions. Having access to that level of support will almost always make it easier to keep an entire family of pharmacies properly stocked at all times.
Just about every drug inventory management system on the market today includes features other than those above. These five types of functionality, however, should be sought from such a system in just about every case.
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