Choosing an LMIS for a small NGO or clinic network: ten questions to ask

Most published guidance on choosing a logistics management information system (LMIS) is written for ministries of health choosing a national system. A small NGO, a mission hospital or a network of a dozen clinics has a different problem: a short budget, one or two people who will run it, and a need to be working within weeks rather than years. This article is ten questions worth asking any system you are considering, and how OpenBoxes answers each one, including where it does not.

1. Does it track batches and expiry dates, and pick the earliest expiry first?#

For medicines and medical supplies this is the first filter. A system that holds one quantity per product cannot tell you which batch to use, or which batch to pull in a recall.

OpenBoxes: yes. Each batch of a product is recorded separately with its lot number, expiry date and quantity, and when you pick stock OpenBoxes suggests the lot that expires first. See FEFO explained.

2. Can it model your network as it really is?#

List your sites before you look at any software: a central store, depots, clinics, wards, dispensaries, and the shelves or bins inside a store. Then ask whether each one can be a place that holds stock.

OpenBoxes: depots (warehouses), wards, dispensaries and bin locations inside a depot are all location types, and stock moves between them as stock movements. Locations describes each type.

3. How does a clinic ask for supplies, and how does the store respond?#

Ask to see a request go from the clinic to the store and back as a delivery, including what happens when the store is short.

OpenBoxes: a request is a stock movement from the store to the requesting site. The store picks and ships it, and when a product is out of stock a substitution can be recorded for the requester to see. See Stock movements.

4. Does it work without an internet connection?#

This question rules systems in or out for remote sites, so ask it early and ask for a demonstration, not a yes.

OpenBoxes: no. It is a web application, and each site needs a connection while it records transactions. There is no offline mode that syncs later. If your sites are often offline, weigh this above everything else on the list.

5. What does it do with barcodes?#

"Supports barcodes" can mean many things: printing labels, typing a code into a search box with a scanner, or a handheld app that reads the expiry and lot out of a GS1 barcode.

OpenBoxes: products carry barcode fields, and a USB or Bluetooth scanner that behaves like a keyboard can type a code into any search field. OpenBoxes itself has no handheld scanning app. On OpenBoxes Lift, a handheld scanning app is in beta: it looks up stock, receives shipments, and picks and ships requests by scanning on every plan, in Chrome on a phone or handheld; saving needs a connection.

6. Does it report into your national system or your donor's?#

If your program reports stock into DHIS2 or a donor's system, find out whether the system sends that data, or whether someone will keep typing it in.

OpenBoxes: OpenBoxes Lift can send your monthly stock report to DHIS2, on every plan. You match your locations and products to the monthly form on your own DHIS2 server (version 2.40 to 2.43), and Lift sends figures such as opening and closing balance, received, dispensed, losses and days out of stock after each month closes, from its once-a-day stock check. It is one way and aggregate only: no tracker data, and nothing comes back into OpenBoxes. A DHIS2 server our team has not approved before waits for approval first, and a server that only accepts known addresses needs to allow both of Lift's DHIS2 addresses, 35.196.140.40 and 34.26.184.92. For a donor's system, the Reporting API gives you stock on hand and activity to feed your own reporting script. DHIS2 Integration has the detail.

7. How will you know something is about to run out?#

A system you have to remember to check will be checked less often on a busy week.

OpenBoxes: you set a minimum level per product per location, and OpenBoxes flags what is below it. OpenBoxes Lift adds an opt-in daily email of products below their minimum and lots close to expiry, and can post stock-outs to Slack, Microsoft Teams or PagerDuty. It checks once a day, not in real time. Where should your stock alerts go? compares the options.

8. Can you get all of your data out, in a form you can use?#

Ask this before you sign anything. The answer tells you what leaving would cost.

OpenBoxes: it is open-source, so you can always run the same software yourself with the same data model. Reports and lists export from inside OpenBoxes, and OpenBoxes Lift adds a download of your backups and a data export in the portal. What happens to your data if you leave a hosted provider goes through it.

9. Who runs the servers, and where is the data?#

Someone has to install, upgrade, back up and monitor any system. Decide who that is before you choose, and check whether your country or funder requires the data to stay in the country.

OpenBoxes: you can run it on your own server, which keeps the data wherever you put it, or pay a host. OpenBoxes Lift runs the servers, upgrades, backups and monitoring for you on Google Cloud in the us-east1 region. If you must host in the country, raise that before anything else; running OpenBoxes yourself on a server in the country is one way to meet it.

10. What will it cost over three years, including your staff's time?#

Licence prices are the easy part. Hosting, upgrades, backups and the hours of whoever looks after the system usually cost more.

OpenBoxes: the software is free. What you pay for is running it, yourself or through a host. Self-hosted or managed OpenBoxes: a total-cost worksheet lists the line items to fill in, and the pricing page has Lift's published prices.

How to use the answers#

• Rank the questions for your own situation first. For a network of remote clinics, question 4 may decide everything; for a single hospital store, questions 1 and 7 matter most.
• Ask for evidence, not a yes. A short demonstration of a request, a receipt with a lot number and an export answers more than a feature list.
• Try it with your own work. The public OpenBoxes demo has a sample health network with about two years of history, and a 30-day trial of OpenBoxes Lift gives you a private instance for your own data. The one-minute portal tour shows what the hosted side looks like.

If your data is in spreadsheets today, When a spreadsheet stops being enough for your stock may be the better place to start.