E-services: NMS nominated for the NITA-U Excellence Awards

National Medical Stores (NMS), a government entity mandated to purchase, store and distribute essential medicines to primarily public health facilities, has been nominated for the NITA-U Awards of Excellence.

NMS + CSSP and NMS in particular were nominated in three categories at the NITA-U Excellence Awards.

This is the E-Service award of the year (health); E-Service of the year (human development) and Agency of the year.

NMS ICT Manager Stephen Kisuze was also nominated for the CIO of the Year award.

To vote, use the link below: https://awards.nita.go.ug/vote

The adoption of modern technology has helped NMS to streamline operations and deliver services seamlessly.

“NMS has developed an internal system where all of our processes are digitized or are being digitized,” Kisuze said.

“This could have happened with the help of the government and development partners who come to help us when we need funding,” he added.

The government has struggled with the theft of drug supplies from the district level where third parties are involved in distributing drugs to health facilities, especially in remote areas.

However, to mitigate theft and other drug loss throughout the supply chain, NMS is implementing NMS +, a system to digitize the entire supply chain process from end to end in order to ensure effective tracking of government drugs to end users.

Once the system is fully operational, the NMS will have the ability to trace supplies to the end user (patients and other healthcare customers) through identification using the national identification number (NIN) which will be entered in the ERP system.

This will provide end user data which will then be reconciled with purchases and distribution data to ensure there is no leakage in the supply chain.

It will also provide essential information for better quantification of drugs and related health supplies.

Health facilities that receive drugs from NMS include Mulago National Referral Hospitals, national research institutes such as the Ugandan blood transfusion service and Uganda Heart Institute and regional referral hospitals such as Mbarara Regional Referral hospital.

Others include district general hospitals which provide prevention, promotion, curative outpatient, maternity, hospitalization, emergency, surgery and blood transfusion and laboratory services.

NMS also supplies medicines to health centers II, III, IV.

This year’s awards started with the e-Government Masterclass and an e-Government Expo. The event will conclude with the E-Government Excellence Award and Gala to be held on December 10, 202 to highlight the advancement of e-government services in Uganda.

The main objective of the campaign is to share experiences with various government entities across the country, who share a vision of innovative administration through the application of e-government.