PHI DATA and BELINTRA help make hospital stock management significantly more efficient
Wemmel, 08 September 2022 – IT integrator PHI DATA, specialists in digitising business processes, have joined forces with healthcare solutions provider BELINTRA to radically improve restocking processes in hospital stockrooms. With an automated Kanban (empty/full) system, both companies are helping hospitals organise their stock management systems more efficiently, thereby minimising the risk of errors and saving them a considerable amount of time.
The BELINTRA OptiScanBan® solution being brought to the market by PHI DATA is based on the Kanban system, often used for stock management within certain departments: i.e. what is in stock and what needs to be reordered? By turning the Kanban status cards in one direction or the other, it is possible to indicate the status (empty/full) of each product. ‘Without automation, nurses or other hospital staff have to manually move or insert status cards, sometimes ending up with cards being lost, dropped on the floor, etc. Following this, logistics staff have to come and manually scan the goods to be replenished’, explains Kurt Nauwelaerts, Sales Manager Integrated Solutions at PHI DATA. ‘With this solution, the status of each product in each stockroom is automatically recorded and processed in real time.’
The BELINTRA OptiScanBan® system consists of digitally readable OptiScanBan® labelling holders on trays or shelves, along with one or more cameras with 360° coverage within the same storage area. The cameras read the status of the OptiScanBan® label holders and are connected to the network via a Power over Ethernet (PoE) connection. The OptiScanBan® software analyses the camera snapshots, recognises the status of each item by its colour code and records its current status in the database (green = in stock, red = to be replenished). In addition, PHI DATA uses its IDhospitalsupply software to seamlessly link this data to the hospital’s ERP or other management system for further processing.
‘This combined solution will save hospitals a great deal of time’, explains Dirk Deruytere, VP Sales and Marketing Strategy at BELINTRA. ‘It can take nurses and logistics staff several hours a week to go through all the wards and check the stock levels of each product. What’s more, the risk of error is greater when it comes to the manual entry and processing of data.’
BELINTRA and PHI DATA have respectively accumulated decades of experience in the hospital sector, meaning their solutions are perfectly tailored to their specific needs. ‘We also provide added value with our integration services’, adds Kurt Nauwelaerts. ‘We know the ins and outs of hospitals and are able to supplement our solutions with additional tools where necessary. In addition, by incorporating a mobile terminal with IDhospitalsupply, we have a back-up system that can take over should the OptiScanBan® camera solution be temporarily out of action, thereby preventing having to resort to pen and paper.’
Managing costs through innovation
According to Dirk Deruytere, this advanced stock management solution responds perfectly to the needs of hospitals in 2022: ‘Most healthcare institutions are facing enormous challenges in terms of time pressure, efficiency and cost management. Everyone is after innovative solutions to help with the continual improvement of their processes. PHI DATA and BELINTRA’s joint solution renders stock-taking much more efficient. Plus, we can guarantee that the investment will have paid for itself in fewer than two years.’
