E-DRUG: Medical Stores

E-drug: Medical Stores (cont.)
------------------------------

I read the one contribution about Central Medical Stores the other day.

I was a medical supply sergeant in the German Army (in another life :-)-O)
and thus gained a tiny little bit of insight into how they do their thing.

What surprised me was most how little information was required per item.
This may have had something to do with the fact, that 20 years ago they
used punch cards which had 80 positions so all information had to fit
into 80 bytes.

And, they have this back order system really well organized. If it's
not on this run it'll come on the next truck. This is probably the biggest
problem for us here in that one has to remember what didn't come and
manually reorder it for the next order or for an interim order.
(We have a two month regular order cycle for our district)

Nowadays with the powerful hardware being so ridiculously cheap and the
Unix operating system clones being free of charge I am wondering why
we are only theorizing and not actually designing such a prototype
system under linux for example?

But then, I *AM* naive....

el

--
Dr. Eberhard W. Lisse\ / Swakopmund State Hospital
<el@lisse.NA> * | Resident Medical Officer
Private Bag 5004 \ / +264 81 124 6733 (cell) 64 461005(h)
461004(f)
Swakopmund, Namibia ;____/ Domain Coordinator for NA-DOM (el108)
Vice-Chairman, Board of Trustees, Namibian Internet Development Foundation,
an Association not for Gain. NAMIDEF is the Namibian Internet Service
Provider.

----Note from the E-drug moderator:

Maybe those with experiences (+ or -) with Inventory Software for Medical
Stores could share their opinion with other E-druggers?

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