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RxTrack was initially conceived to provide a technical services for the GRID-NEA Health Team
(http://grid-nea.org/) a medical mission team for northern Ghana. The pharmacy group required a simple printing service to generate drug labels as patients were dispensed drugs.

RxTrack aims to deliver a low-volume (<500 labels per printer per day), easy-to-use label printing solution used primarily by pharmacists and related health care providers for specific projects.

Medical information systems have proven to be complex and expensive and do not meet the needs of a smaller community with specific needs. Typically on medical missions, drug inventory is acquired in bulk beforehand and replenishing inventory is done at a minimum since drugs are not usually available at the remote mission site.

Overcoming Challenges
Drug delivery in third world countries have their own challenges beyond those in richer countries. With minimal availability of medical professionals, patients do not hold the concepts of standard practices and procedures on health matters including drug counceling and delivery.

Literacy
As drugs are dispensed, it must be understood by the patient on how it is administered. Along with patient information, labels need to indicate quantity, frequency, and other special notes. The tool leverages pictograms provided by various sources to accommodate this help the patients. See link http://lincs.ed.gov/pipermail/healthliteracy/2007/000752.html for more information. Face-to-face counseling is also done to further enforce the conventions used on the drug labels.

Cost
With limited funds, this project aims to provide an software open-source solution. The only cost to users of RxTrack would be those of hardware and labels.

Simplicity
RxTrack users should be able to streamline the tool to only view drugs pertinent to what is available and needed. Efficiency is needed to quickly process drugs with minimal errors. Users should not be required to understand technical issues behind the system once it is set up. The system should run for the medical team without IT support as it may normally not be available due to costs or availability.

Analytics
Reports and statistics are normally analyzed after the project is over, but some statistics are useful during the drug process. Some examples include Number of scripts dispensed, drug inventory levels etc. These critical statistics should be available on a continuous basis as the software is used.

Typically phases involved in using RxTrack on a field site:

  1. Preparation
    In this phase, the user needs to understand the patient demographics. Language and culture are useful to understand if the labels provided by the software would fit your needs. Also it would be useful to know if the software will be used on several machines as multiple printers may need to be acquired. In remote areas, AC power may not be readily available, and power surges are common. Be prepared with backup plans, surge protection and temperature protection. Thermal printers have operating temperature ranges listed on their specifications.

  2. Software Setup
    Drug list is critical in providing a base set of available drug/inventories to the software. RxTrack uses STANDARD DOSAGES to dispense, so the health-care provider needs to establish what quantities will be needed for each drug. Loading the software on all machines with the master drug dosage list should be done on all machines and tested for accurateness. Test that all printers are functional.

  3. Education
    All users need to familiarized with RxTrack so that they will be well prepared in the field. A mock-execution is highly recommended.

  4. Execution
    When arriving at the field site, verify that all equipment and software are functional. Backup systems as required.

  5. Completion
    Statistics and data can be extracted from RxTrack for analysis for next time.

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