Alfa helps drug distributors, pharmacies, hospitals and care homes to cut costs while providing better services by streamlining the medication distribution processes.
A case study carried out by one of our customers, operating an 800 bed hospital, has documented time savings equivalent to three Full Time Employees in the pharmacy and twelve FTE‘s at the hospital wards. Furthermore, this research revealed a 90% reduction in erroneous orders and a 6-8% reduction in products maintained on stock, resulting in less capital tied up in medication stock.
Time savings
- Automated replenishment orders
- Fully electronic ordering and delivery processes
- Extensive time savings:
- In the pharmacy
- At the clinical wards
Better stock management
- Pharmacy gets 100% overview
- Less capital tied up in medication stocks
- Faster stock turnaround
- Less expiration-related waste
- Fewer stock outs
- Fewer acute orders
Other key benefits
- Using state-of-the-art tools increases job satisfaction
- Alfa takes advantage of bar-coding technology
- Alfa supports logistics for commodities as well as medicines
Overview
Traceabillity & communication
Alfa provides 100% overview of all wards throughout an entire organisation. All product movements and all user actions are logged.
Complete overview in pharmacy
-
- 100% overview of all ward stock levels
- Shipment frequency is optimised
- Products are fully traceable
- Deliveries are electronically signed for by the wards
- Supports formulary maintenance based on usage history
Great tool for the wards
- Overview of products in transit to and from wards
- Users on the clinical wards can search throughout the entire hospital network for medications or other stocked products
- Overview of generic substitutions made by pharmacy
Improved collaboration
- Structured communications
- Between wards
- Between pharmacy and wards
- Effective notification of delivery problems
- Explaining cause and expected solution
- Suggesting workarounds
Safety
Compliance & reliability
Alfa provides safety on different levels.
Drug availability
- Usage history makes it easy to calibrate ward stock order values
- Automated orders minimise the likelihood of stock-outs
- In case of stock-outs, a powerful search feature minimises the time required to search for the nearest stock with availability within the entire hospital network.
Security and compliance
- Configurable privileges and traceable user actions
- Alfa provides decision support when product substitution is needed
- Optional module available for paperless handling of controlled drugs, enabling prompt discrepancy handling and full regulatory compliance
- Orders for controlled drugs are electronically signed for by the wards using services provided by E-Sign (UK)
Proven technology
- Alfa is a reliable software solution designed for availability and fail-over
- The solution has been deployed successfully in small and large settings
- Fully web-based and easy-to-use user interface
Flexibility
Multiple deployment scenarios
Alfa is designed to act as a solution hub, bringing together different medication related software solutions. This enables a best of breed approach where organisations can choose the solutions that fit them best. This can be beneficial in multi-organisational structures where networked hospitals or long-term care facilities use different solutions but need to collaborate with a single provider of medicines such as pharmacy or a distributor.
Medication provider
- Alfa supports order routing to multiple stock control systems.
- These can be traditional shelf- based systems or automated dispensing robots (Unit– or multidose)
- Alfa can deliver great benefits by only integrating with a medication stock control system
- For further benefits, Alfa can be integrated with financial systems (ERP)
Wards
- Ward users can get full benefits of Alfa without third party solutions
- Alternatively, Alfa can be integrated with third party ward dispensing software or medication cabinets
- Alfa is also used in some settings to order commodities
Flexible deployment
- Alfa can be deployed in several ways solving different needs
- Examples:
- Simple setting with one pharmacy & one hospital
- Larger scale hospital groups and multiple pharmacies
- Multiple organisations serviced by a distributor or outsourcing pharmacy
