Falco Marco F, Meyer Johanna C, Putter Susan J, Underwood Richard S, Nabayiga Hellen, Opanga Sylvia, Miljković Nenad, Nyathi Ephodia, Godman Brian
Department of Public Health Pharmacy and Management, School of Pharmacy, Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University, Garankuwa, Pretoria 0208, South Africa.
United States Agency for International Development Global Health Supply Chain-Technical Assistance, Hatfield, Pretoria 0083, South Africa.
Healthcare (Basel). 2023 Jun 24;11(13):1838. doi: 10.3390/healthcare11131838.
The introduction of the National Surveillance Centre (NSC) has improved the efficiency and effectiveness of managing medicines availability within the public healthcare system in South Africa. However, at present, there is limited data regarding the perceptions among users of the NSC and challenges that need addressing. A descriptive quantitative study was performed among all registered active NSC users between August and November 2022. Overall, 114/169 users responded to a custom-developed, self-administered questionnaire (67.5% response rate). Most respondents used the Stock Visibility System (SVS) National Department of Health (NDoH) (66.7% for medicines and 51.8% for personal protective equipment (PPE) or SVS COVID-19 (64.9% for COVID-19 vaccines) or RxSolution (57.0% manual report or 42.1% application programming interface (API)) for reporting medicines, PPE, and COVID-19 vaccines to the NSC and were confident in the accuracy of the reported data. Most respondents focused on both medicines availability and reporting compliance when accessing the NSC, with the integrated medicines availability dashboard and the COVID-19 vaccine dashboard being the most popular. The respondents believed the NSC allowed ease of access to data and improved data quality to better monitor medicines availability and use. Identified areas for improvement included improving internet connectivity, retraining some users, standardising the dashboards, adding more data points and reports, and expanding user adoption by increasing licence limits. Overall, this study found that the NSC in South Africa provides an effective solution for monitoring and improving medicines availability.
国家监测中心（NSC）的引入提高了南非公共医疗系统中管理药品供应的效率和成效。然而，目前关于NSC用户的看法以及需要解决的挑战的数据有限。2022年8月至11月期间，对所有注册的活跃NSC用户进行了一项描述性定量研究。总体而言，169名用户中有114名回复了一份定制的自填式问卷（回复率为67.5%）。大多数受访者使用卫生部（NDoH）的库存可见系统（SVS）（用于药品的占66.7%，用于个人防护装备（PPE）的占51.8%）或SVS COVID-19（用于COVID-19疫苗的占64.9%）或RxSolution（用于向NSC报告药品、PPE和COVID-19疫苗，手动报告占57.0%，应用程序编程接口（API）占42.1%），并对报告数据的准确性有信心。大多数受访者在访问NSC时既关注药品供应又关注报告合规性，综合药品供应仪表板和COVID-19疫苗仪表板最受欢迎。受访者认为NSC使数据访问变得容易，并提高了数据质量，以便更好地监测药品供应和使用情况。确定的改进领域包括改善互联网连接、对一些用户进行再培训、使仪表板标准化、增加更多数据点和报告，以及通过提高许可限制来扩大用户采用率。总体而言，本研究发现南非的NSC为监测和改善药品供应提供了一个有效的解决方案。
