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From the beginning of September 2024, a new electronic system for the distribution of biobased products in Bulgaria is in operation, allowing the tracking of the path of each vaccine in Bulgaria - from the conclusion of the contract for its delivery to its administration. The system was developed by Information Services as part of the National Health Information System (NHIS).
In the last two months, more than 4,200 vaccine recipients, including general practitioners (GPs) and health care facilities (HCFs), have been registered from all 28 Regional health inspectorates (RHIs) in the country. More than 3700 individual dispense records from RHIs were reported, with more than 13,000 items and over 800,000 vaccine doses.
The system tracks each vaccine by specific contract and supplier, with clearly defined quantities, lots and prices. This allows full control and detailed tracking, as well as the ability to make all necessary reports.
The new platform incorporates modules for the complete tracking of vaccine and syringe movements - from the conclusion of contracts between the Ministry of Health (MoH) and suppliers, through the scheduling of planned deliveries, arrival at the central MoH warehouse, allocation to each RHI in the country, to the management of electronic requests and planned dispensing of quantities to GPs and medical facilities where immunisations are carried out.
The system significantly reduces the errors made in the course of manual listing of vaccine types and especially vaccine lots. Until now, RHIs were using different local software, without a centralised management system, which had been in place for more than 20 years and led to chaos in the reporting of e-immunisations in the NHIS. Doctors can now only report and register in their medical software batches of biobased products for which they have received some quantities.
The newly built system is centralized and has been developed as a web-based application that meets all information security and usability requirements, as provided for by the law and the recommendations of the Ministry of e-Governance (MoEG).
The system also improves the planning of vaccine dispensing from RHIs to physicians by introducing rules for electronic requesting and scheduled dispensing, which puts an end to physicians’ waiting at health inspectorates. A transition to electronic reporting of annual plans and the elimination of the need for paper reporting of administered vaccines by doctors is also foreseen.
All 28 RHIs in Bulgaria are already using the new platform and are registering hundreds of vaccine requests, dispensing and supplies every day.
A series of training sessions are to be held for doctors, who should be fully up to speed with the new electronic process for requesting and receiving biobased products through the system by the end of the year.