Development of a Web-Based Software for Prescription Monitoring and Medicine Management in a University Healthcare Facility

Abstract

In a typical health care facility in Nigeria, pharmacy operations are laden with paper-based methods of documentation and routine tasks of medicine distribution. As a result, there are largely inadequate structures in place to monitor patients’ prescription history and prevent impersonations and fraud. This study presents the development of a web-based system (PharmaPortal) to manage medicine inventory and prescriptions at the healthcare facility of the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile – Ife. PharmaPortal was implemented with PHP, MySQL, JavaScript and CSS on Apache web server. The software is browser-based and was made accessible at various workstations within the Local Area Network (LAN) of the healthcare facility. Routine activities in five sections of the healthcare facility were digitized into six modules with each containing closely related tasks and activities within the sections. The use of PharmaPortal was shown to enhance the speed of patients’ registration and information retrieval, as well as provide a simplified pharmacy inventory and prescription management. Most significantly, an evaluation of the system revealed an improved tracking of prescriptions through the use of patient identifiers which served to eliminate impersonation and reduce fraud.

Suggested citation

Margaret Afolabi , Afọlabi Ojerinde , Olugbenga Akinade (2022). Development of a Web-Based Software for Prescription Monitoring and Medicine Management in a University Healthcare Facility African Journal of Science Policy and Innovation Management, 3(1). https://doi.org/10.69798/34939599

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