1.

Identify the challenges faced by African patients and explain how mPharma attempted to

address some of them

Challenges faced by African patients

 15 physicians per 100,000 inhabitants (less than one-tenth of most countries)
 62% of 1.2 billion people live in rural areas where access to medical facilities is very
difficult
 The drug manufacturers and pharmacies have limited data on which to develop an
accurate forecast of demand
 Patients have to travel for miles to specific pharmacy only to find drug is out of stock

For eg

Person X got Fever on day 1. He assumes that will be he will be recover in 3 days
and does not visit doctor. But after 3 days fever increases and he looks for doctor. But due to less
number of doctors, he gets appointment after 2 days. His fever has increased so much and doctor
advices test. The test result came in 1 day. The person X is confirmed with typhoid

Shop no 5 have drugs for typhoid. But he do not know that and visit shop no 1 which is 10 km away. Shop no
5 have drugs for typhoid. But he do not know that and visit shop no 1 which is 10 km away

So, in the above case it takes 7 days to get drug to person X

On the same day 2 more patients buys typhoid drugs and it is out of stock now. They do not
know where to get drugs without mPharma
mPharma’s solution to these problems
 mPharma builds information system that connect patients, hospitals, pharmacies and
drug manufacturers via networks, software and mobile phones
 With this technology mPharma manages drug inventory and track which drug is
available at given time and location.
 But if mPharma is available he can get the drug 1 day before. He can put the details of the drug
in the mPharma IS then mPharma displays it is available from shop no 5.

So he can directly visit shop no 5 and get the drug.

Then it gets automatically informed through mPharma that shop no 5 drugs are out of shop and send
information to wholesaler to send drugs to shop no 5.

Then notify drug manufacturers to send drug to wholesalers. If 2 more patients get typhoid then it will
notify pharmaceutical companies that typhoid becomes contagious in city X and inform them to
manufacture more typhoid drugs

2.  Identify the challenges with the IS proposed by mPharma. How can the company attempt
to address them
Challenges with the IS proposed by mPharma
 Some participants were reluctant to come on-board.
 Hospitals were not willing to share patient/doctor’s data
 Pharmacies did not allowed mPharma to access inventory data due to privacy
concerns
 People will feel difficult to use new technology
 Non digitalisation of prescriptions (i.e) handwritten prescriptions.

Attempts to the challenges

 Have a clear goal. Make the doctors, pharma manufacturers, pharmacy retailers to
understand the whole idea
 Get monetary support from venture capitalists, financial institutions etc
 Develop information system on top of this infrastructure and find out how
prescriptions are filled and how medicines are consumed
 Doctors are requested to fill prescriptions in Information systems provided by
mPharma so that proper analysis can be done what disease spreads very fast
 This use to forecast which drugs are required at which part of year (based on seasonal
changes)
 Then provide proper data about the availability of medicines and its stock to pharma
manufacturers, doctors and make life of patients easier