Auto Expiry Notification and Inventory System for Pharmacies

Abstract

Smartphones are extensively used for steering many important life activities, from exploring a health condition to accessing educational resources. A majority of smartphones users use their phones to keep themselves aware with the breaking news and share the happenings among the local community. Our purposed system had simplified the pharmacists to address their efforts of checking the expiry date of various drugs on regular or weekly basis by getting automatic expiry alerts. This system had benefited both manufacturer and seller of drugs. The users of web application (Supplier or Manufacturer) had encoded the drug information and generated a QR code in the form of image for the given drug information. The users of android app (Pharmacists) had scanned that QR code and received the automatic expiry alert on their smartphones. All the scanned QR codes information had been shown on the web page. The developed web application could be used to enter product information. The automatic QR code images had been generated for the information that was provided by the user. The generated QR code images could be saved and printed. The encoded information has been stored on the database that was connected with application server. The android app users were able to scan that QR code automatically and store the encoded information on application server database. The application server had triggered an auto email before 15 days to pharmacists through cron job whenever the expiry date of dugs matched with our query logic. The auto email contains product list which wil be going to expire. The android user will also be able to get android pop up notification for expired products that will keep updated the pharmacists about the expiry date. The pharmacists will also be able to generate an automated inventory through email. The emails were send to the suppliers to replace the expired stock. The web page had been used to display all the information related to the purchased product. The strategy used to develop the system included (SDLC) iterative waterfall model approach, interviews and studied existing systems through document analysis. This qualitative study had been used to gather data and requirements for quality system design. The dataflow, logical and entity relationship diagrams were used to design the system. The PHP, CSS, JavaScript, HTML and JAVA programming language were used for web and android app development.