A design and development of computerized unit-dose drug distribution system

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to design and develop a client-server computerized unit-dose drug distribution system, which can overcome the problems of the old system and can be used as a tool to support the unit-dose drug distribution system's operations which is one of the operations in pharmaceutical services. The analysis and the design are based on the object-oriented technique called Rumbaugh's Object Modeling Technique (OMT). Data is stored in a relational database using Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 database management system and programmed by Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 on microcomputer under Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 as an operating system. The system is developed from the procedures and data collected from the department of medicine at Nongbualumphu Hospital. This study results in a client-server computerized unit-dose drug distribution system, which is divided into 7 subsystems : patient's admission patient's medication patient's discharge drug inventory reporting calculating patient's cost and base data. The developed system can eliminate the complexity of data storage, access data quickly, and complete desired reports easily. Including all computers in the system are linked together to provide flexible processing. The department of pharmacy of the hospital can use this system as a tool to support the unit-dose drug distribution system's operations, which can minimize the disadvantages of the conventional one by minimizing the rate of drug misuse, appropriate drug utilization, reducing the waste in drugs in each step of the operation, maximizing accuracy of calculating cost of used drug suitable use of person depending on their professional skill and, high quality of patient care.