Can you improve traceability of medication given at home?

GDW Health is a high-value tool for healthcare companies that need transparent tracking of the logistics and transport of medical supplies. The most common use case is the transport of medication administered by medical staff at the patient's home. 

We will look at how GDW Health improves the traceability of medication administered at home from three angles: the supervisor's, working from the operations center; the clinician's, that is, the people in the field; and the patient's.

GDW guarantees traceability of medication and medical supplies at every stage by scanning barcodes with phones or tablets, ensuring end-to-end traceability.

 

The supervisor's view: geolocating field healthcare staff and geo-managing routes.

 

GoDoWorks Health lets medical institutions geolocate healthcare staff on the road, giving visibility of each professional's availability in real time along with arrival and departure records for medical or nursing visits. Another advantage of that location data is an indicator of visits by stage of the process and online status reporting for the service.

This substantially improves the traceability of medication administered at home, because you know exactly where each doctor or nurse is, how long they stay there, the purpose of the visit and how many times they have been at that same address doing the same work, among other things.

On top of that, GoDoWorks Health enables geo-management of routes. That means: tracking and control of the scheduled agenda by geolocation, visibility of reports, completion of digital forms, location records, and chat and messaging. In other words, it allows control of assets — here, medication — through global stock control and per-person control.

The GoDoWorks Health software runs on artificial intelligence, so it can do what is called smart assignment. It assigns calls based on four variables: the nearest professional, the professional with the fewest tasks assigned, the nearest available professional, and the professional with the most time free. Why does this improve traceability of medication administered at home? Because the logistics and transport of medication also benefit from that smart assignment, and from the speed and order it brings. 

See also: How to handle medical certification remotely: the SEMM case

 

The field clinician's view: digital forms and media evidence

 

The person in the field — the doctor or nurse — gets several advantages: the mobile app view, route management, the digital patient record and forms, and corporate chat. 

Take the app view first. On the clinician's smartphone or tablet a screen shows the tasks to be done, the date and time and all the information needed to carry out the work as productively as possible. 

Second, artificial intelligence supplies an optimal route and a location map, which lets the field worker geolocate the visit address, tells them their time and journey and optimizes routes based on where they are. That cuts the time and resources normally spent traveling and gives clear control over the path medication takes from the operations center to the patient's home.

Then GoDoWorks Health gives the field worker access to the digital patient record, digital medical follow-up forms, photographic records and media evidence, and digital sign-off. That feeds and maintains a digital database, built from text and images, holding all the information about the medication (dose changes, switches between brands, and so on), which strengthens the quality of traceability. And digital signatures are solid proof that cannot go missing the way paper records do.

Finally, there are the benefits of internal chat, which allows direct conversation between the operations center and clinicians in the field. That further reinforces the recording, follow-up and traceability of information. 

 

The patient's view: rating and digital records

 

From the patient's side, there is the option to rate the care received, which happens automatically by email after the visit, with its details, so they can score it.

It is worth noting that, as we have seen, GoDoWorks Health is built on digital records, which cuts the administrative costs that come with paper. It also removes the confusion and errors paper causes, raising the quality of traceability for medication administered at home and, with it, people's satisfaction with the care they receive.