How to investigate drug use in health facilities : selected drug use indicators

Blockchain implementation for circular supply chain management: Evaluating critical success factors

Supply Chain processes are continuously marred by myriad factors including varying demands, changing routes, major disruptions, and compliance issues. Therefore, supply chains require monitoring and ongoing optimization. Data science uses real-time data to provide analytical insights, leading to automation and improved decision making. RFID is an ideal technology to source big data, particularly in supply chains, because RFID tags are consumed across supply chain process, which includes scanning raw materials, completing products, transporting goods, and storing products, with accuracy and speed. This study carries out a systematic literature review of research articles published during the timeline (2000-2021) that discuss the role of RFID technology in developing decision support systems that optimize supply chains in light of Industry 4.0. Furthermore, the study offers recommendations on operational efficiency of supply chains while reducing the costs of implementing the RFID technology. The core contribution of this paper is its analysis and evaluation of various RFID implementation methods in supply chains with the aim of saving time effectively and achieving cost efficiencies. 

Enhancing supply chain performance using RFID technology and decision support systems in the industry 4.0-A systematic literature review

Rational prescribing remains an important component of rational drug use. The World Health Organization (WHO) standardized and validated core prescribing indicators for evaluating prescribing pattern of drugs. The prescribing practice has been shown to deviate from national and WHO guidelines in Ethiopia. The aim of this study was; therefore, to investigate the overall prescribing behavior of four governmental hospitals: Hiwot Fana Specialized University Hospital (HFSUH), Federal Harar Police Hospital (FHPH), Jugel Hospital (JH) and Southeast Command III Hospital (SECIIIH), Harar, eastern Ethiopia. Hospital based retrospective cross-sectional study was employed to evaluate outpatient prescriptions dispensed from January 1 – December 31, 2016. A total of 2400 prescriptions (600 from each hospital) were assessed. A combination of prescription completeness and prescribing indicator forms were used to collect the data. From a total of 2400 prescriptions reviewed, only HFSUH and FHPH were using standard prescription at prevalence of 92.5 and 99.8%, respectively. Name and weight of the patient were the most and the least commonly recorded information, respectively. A total of 5217 drugs were prescribed with an average number of drugs per encounter to be 2.17 (±0.39) and the highest value (2.60) was observed at FHPH. The frequency of administration was the most commonly written component (85.0%) with an average of 1.85 per prescription. Among all prescriptions analyzed, the percentage of encounters with antimicrobials and injectables prescribed were 66.9 and 26.5%, respectively. The prevalence of drugs prescribed with generic name and from essential drug list were 4644 (89.01%) and 4613 (88.42%), respectively. Among health professional related information, dispenser name was the least documented in all hospitals with the prevalence being 3.9%. JH and SECIIIH were not using standard prescriptions at all during the review period. Besides, some important components of the prescription such as age, sex and diagnosis were not properly recorded or missed at all in the selected hospitals. The tendency of prescribing drugs with dose and dosage form was very poor. Overall, none of the core prescribing indicators was in line with the WHO standards. These and other related problems should be investigated in-depth to find out the underlying problems for which interventional strategies can be designed to reverse this worrying practice.

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Investigation of prescribing behavior at outpatient settings of governmental hospitals in eastern Ethiopia: an overall evaluation beyond World Health Organization core prescribing indicators

Bangladesh has achieved major gains in maternal and newborn survival, facility childbirth and skilled birth attendance between 1991 and 2010, but excess maternal mortality persists. High-quality maternal health care is necessary to address this burden. Implementation of WHO Safe Childbirth Checklist (SCC), whose items address the major causes of maternal deaths, is hypothesized to improve adherence of providers to essential childbirth practices. The SCC was adapted for the local context through expert consultation meetings, creating a total of 27 checklist items. This study was a pre-post evaluation of SCC implementation. Data were collected over 8 months at Magura District Hospital. We analysed 468 direct observations of birth (main analysis using 310 complete observations and sensitivity analysis with the additional 158 incomplete observations) from admission to discharge. The primary outcome of interest was the number of essential childbirth practices performed before compared to after SCC implementation. The change was assessed using adjusted Poisson regression models accounting for clustering by nurse-midwives. After checklist introduction, significant improvements were observed: on average, around 70% more of these safe childbirth practices were performed in the follow-up period compared to baseline (from 11 to 19 out of 27 practices). Substantial increases were seen in communication between nurse-midwives and mothers (counselling), and in management of complications (including rational use of medicines). In multivariable models that included characteristics of the mothers and of the nurse-midwives, the rate of delivering the essential childbirth practices was 1.71 times greater in the follow-up compared to baseline (95% CI 1.61–1.81). Implementation of SCC has the potential to improve essential childbirth practice in resource-poor settings like Bangladesh. This study emphasizes the need for health system strengthening in order to achieve the full advantages of SCC implementation.

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Improving quality of care for maternal and newborn health: a pre-post evaluation of the Safe Childbirth Checklist at a hospital in Bangladesh

RFID-integrated blockchain-driven circular supply chain management: A system architecture for B2B tea industry

Irrational prescribing of drugs is a major health concern in developing countries like Bangladesh. A study was therefore undertaken in a hospital, situated in Rajshahi region of Bangladesh, to find the prescribing pattern and to detect the prescription errors to the admitted patients. Prescriptions of 200 patients were collected from various departments of the hospital over a period of three months. Prescription pattern was analyzed using general indicators suggested by WHO and prescribing errors were determined by comparing the prescribed drugs with national standard treatment guidelines, textbooks and authentic online resources. The average number of drugs per prescription was found to be 4.89 and 76.5% prescriptions contained complex regimen. In this study, we found no prescription with generic name. The percentage of prescription with antibiotics was 78% that was 15.95% of total drugs. The injectable preparations used were 17.18% of total 978 drugs. About 769 (3.85 per prescription) prescription errors were identified from 978 prescribed drugs. The name of 35 prescribed drugs was not clear due to illegible hand writing. The dose strength was missing for 279 drugs and 31 drugs had improper abbreviation. The study also identified 409 drug interactions. About 6.5% prescription orders were identified for the patients with kidney and urinary problems and there was no dose adjustment. Frequency of occurrence of prescription errors found during the study can be rated high. The prescription pattern and the prescription errors have indicated the need to establish proper system of recording and analyzing therapy before writing a prescription in order to promote rational drug therapy.

Prescribing Pattern and Prescription Errors: A Study at a Tertiary Care Hospital of Bangladesh

Influence of blockchain technology in SME internationalization: Evidence from high-tech SMEs in India

Social networks have been extensively studied in business-to-consumer (B2C) studies, but their effects in a business-to-business (B2B) marketing context are under-theorized. The study develops an integrated social network marketing metric (SNMM) for B2B small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Using the framework, the study establishes a theoretical link between behavioral reasoning theory (BRT) and marketing accountability theory (MAT). Data was collected from 254 B2B SME marketers in India through a structured questionnaire survey and semi-structured interviews. At first glance, the missing link between SME performance and SNMM appears to be time, knowledge, and financial resources. SMEs that embrace innovation, proactiveness, and risk-taking can benefit from social media technologies. Thus, social networking has a direct, positive effect on SME growth. The implications for B2B SMEs’ SNMM studies are also discussed. Furthermore, the rationality of B2B marketing metrics has a tremendous influence on business success. Although the study has found a positive impact of SNMM on B2B SMEs success, further research is needed. 

An integrated social network marketing metric for business-to-business SMEs

Although hospital pharmacists are recognized for its importance as health care provider in many developed countries, in most developing countries it is still underutilized. The aim of the present study was to summarize the current scenario of pharmacy practices in four hospitals of Bangladesh and to identify the pharmacist’s rolesin these seftap. The study was conducted through convenient sampling method using a well-designed 14-item questionnaire to collect the opinions from the respondents. The results showed that hospital pharmacy service, as a unique department of hospital, existed in 50% of the studied hospitals where activities were done by graduate pharmacists and they were also involved in different departments to provide clinical services to the patients. The rest 50% of the studied hospitals had no hospital pharmacy service. Only a retail drug store inside the hospital was present and there was no diploma or graduate or any pharmacy technician for providing patient care. This study concludes that hospital pharmacy practice is just started in some private modern hospitals in Bangladesh which is inaccessible for the majority of peoples due to high patients cost of these hospitals. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/bpj.v17i2.22339 Bangladesh Pharmaceutical Journal 17 (2): 187-192, 2014

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Tripti Rani Paul

Papers

RFID-integrated blockchain-driven circular supply chain management: A system architecture for B2B tea industry

Prescribing Pattern and Prescription Errors: A Study at a Tertiary Care Hospital of Bangladesh

Influence of blockchain technology in SME internationalization: Evidence from high-tech SMEs in India

An integrated social network marketing metric for business-to-business SMEs

Practice of Hospital Pharmacy in Bangladesh: Current Perspective