OpenLMIS
OpenLMIS
OpenLMIS is a powerful, open source, cloud-based electronic logistics management information system (LMIS) purpose-built to manage health commodity supply chains. The OpenLMIS mission is to make powerful LMIS software available in low-resource environments providing high-quality logistics management to improve health commodity distribution in low- and middle-income countries. OpenLMIS increases data visibility, helping supply chain managers identify and respond to commodity needs, particularly at health facilities where lack of data significantly impacts the availability of key medicines and vaccines. OpenLMIS is an open source initiative supported by a collaborative group of partners.
Approach
OpenLMIS automates LMIS business processes throughout the entire supply chain, reducing the burden on health workers while improving data accuracy, data timeliness, and data visibility.
OpenLMIS is not specific to the needs of any one vertical and has been used to manage multiple verticals concurrently, from essential medicines, the Expanded Program on Immunization, family planning, and nutrition, to HIV and tuberculosis.
Each health vertical/business can leverage the following features to support the management of its supply chain:
- Requesting and ordering: Use stock data to generate orders using the configurable approval process.
- Order Fulfillment: View and fulfill orders from other facilities and send shipments to initiate a receiving process.
- Inventory management: Capture inventory data and stock movements to provide an overview of full stock availability for any program or product.
- Mobile integration: Leverage mobile tools to track stock movements at facilities with limited connectivity through third-party products like OpenSRP and custom-built OpenLMIS-based applications such as SIGLUS.
- Mobile application: Capture inventory data and stock movements via mobile devices to provide an overview of full stock availability for any program or product.
- Reporting and analytics: Easy-to-use dashboards and reporting metrics across all programs and facilities make it simple to analyze data at both aggregate and individual levels.
- Cold chain inventory management: Capture cold chain equipment inventory, functional status, and temperature status.
Implementations
The OpenLMIS software is currently used to manage logistics processes at more than 12,000 health facilities across 14 geographies, primarily in Africa, providing ordering, reporting, and inventory management for a mix of health programs including for Vaccines (EPI) as well as HIV, Malaria, TB, Family Planning, and Essential Medicines. The technology is fundamental to governance and execution within the Healthcare supply chains in which it operates and even more so to the health of citizens of these countries. Currently the technology is well adopted with half of the countries on the latest version of the platform, with good interest for the remaining countries to upgrade.