PLAMAHS
	Facts and Features The application PLAMAHS (preview) Plamahs Background PLAMAHS Facts and Features PLAMAHS: A tool for the Planning and Management of Assets in the Health Services Evidence based planning and management of assets requires data on: The status of the present installed asset base, through inventory and maintenance information. A reference to the health and equipment policy in order to assess compliance with the policy. Budget information in order to plan and allocate the available financial resources. Procurement information, supporting the acquisition process of the appropriate equipment. The computerised tool PLAMAHS has been developed over the last years for holding, analysing and reporting on all this information. The various functions include: Inventory taking and analysis of equipment and infrastructure Definition of standard assets, with technical specifications and financial data Definition of model facilities for various levels of care Configuring existing facilities according to the model facilities Calculation of budgets for investment and recurrent cost Generation of bills of quantities, generic specifications and distribution lists E.g. the health care reforms, that currently take place in many countries, require a thorough technical and financial evaluation of the current health system. The reforms often result in changes of the health care packages for each level of care and changes in the status and size of facilities within the health system. These changes will influence the standard equipment lists and physical infrastructure requirements. The planning and management of such processes require the handling of great amount of data and is completely in line with the capabilities of PLAMAHS. PLAMAHS can of course also be used to continuously monitor and support the planning and management process of assets, both on national basis, or individual rehabilitation projects. Move up PLAMAHS Modules The PLAMAHS functions have been grouped in modules that cover a number of disciplines within the health service General administrative module - Data entry of, and reporting on general facility data - Definition of the administrative structure of a country - Definition of the health system referral structure Physical infrastructure module - Data entry of, and status reporting on inventory of buildings and rooms - Data entry of, and status reporting on supportive infrastructure Equipment module Inventory Data entry of, and reporting on equipment inventory Statistics and analysis of the equipment inventory. With graphical presentation of the most important inventory statistics. The equipment inventory is compared to the required standard, resulting in an "equipment coverage" indicator. Statistics of equipment inventory can be stored for future reference and - eventually - trend analysis. Definition of model facilities and standard equipment National equipment standards for the various health care levels can be defined. Of each standard equipment item a wide range of indicators can be defined such as detailed specifications, sophistication level, financial information, lifespan etc. Minor items can be grouped in sets and can be referred to as individual equipment item e.g. instrument sets The standard equipment list of model facilities can be copied to existing facilities (through "cloning" of the models) and then fine-tuned to the requirements of each individual facility (up to room level). Procurement Budgets can be produced for investments and annual recurrent cost (procurement, maintenance and depreciation) Grouping of equipment in procurement lots such as medical equipment, medical furniture, office furniture Bills of quantities and corresponding generic specifications Distribution lists per facility in order to support the logistical process System manager module The PLAMAHS system manager can authorize the availability of any report for each individual user group Synchronization of decentralized databases e.g. regional workshops and central office Allocation of user passwords to user groups PLAMAHS start-up screen is user-customizable with project name and graphic Move up PLAMAHS General Features Data access and security Because of the wide variety of features PLAMAHS has resulted in a powerful but rather complex application. Through the user group-approach the complexity for the individual user is reduced and limited to his specific scope of work. This results in a relatively short learning curve. After logon with a specific UserId, a person becomes member of a user group and access is given to the appropriate functionality of the application. Security of data is realised by UserId's and Passwords at logon Recording of UserId and date makes last data changes traceable Country and project-adaptable Report generator with user-customizable headings including project name, logo and report names, query criteria etc. Country adaptable tables such as The administrative structure of a country and the health system referral structure with local naming conventions. (Max. 6 administrative levels; 5 health system referral levels). Definition of tax rates, markets, lots, names of departments and rooms, etc. Decentralised data input support and network support PLAMAHS facilitates working at different locations independently. The data can be merged afterwards with the central database, that holds information of all locations. PLAMAHS is suitable to work in a network environment Graphics Graphics (photographs, drawings etc) can be attached to, and viewed from the following data: general facility data, buildings and rooms, supportive infrastructure, inventory items and standard equipment Reporting with images of general facility data, supportive infrastructure data and standard equipment items User defined scenarios for equipment module Definition of scenarios on which calculations are based. Scenario variables are e.g.: Quality of the maintenance system, priority indicator for standard equipment, number of years for which spare parts and consumables are to be procured, reference date for calculation of age since commissioning of equipment. Scenario-values are stored with the statistics in the archive. Comparative budget calculations can be performed with different scenario settings Results of calculations can be exported to spreadsheet format (e.g. EXCEL) Prepared for multi-language support The present version of PLAMAHS is in English. A French version is in a far stage of development. Translation into other languages can be automated to a large extent. The process makes use of a number of translation tables and reference tables in the desired language. Translation costs can be kept to a minimum if the end-user can realize the translation of these tables. Conversion of existing data Existing data can be converted to the PLAMAHS format. The effort required will depend on the existing data structure Move up Introducing PLAMAHS in your organization Introduction The efforts and cost of introducing PLAMAHS are different for each individual project. An appropriate plan with time schedule and cost estimate can be provided on request. Training For successful introduction of PLAMAHS adequate training of each user group is recommended. The training period for each of the user groups ranges between 2 days and a week. Future support PLAMAHS was conceived during 15 years of daily practice in the field of medical equipment maintenance, planning and management in Uganda, Ghana and Sudan. In the past 5 years the PLAMAHS system was further developed and field tested in projects in Kenya, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Malawi, Uganda and Senegal. Planning and management of assets in the health service has been our main activity during the last 20 years. Also in the future we will remain fully committed to further develop and support PLAMAHS. System Requirements - Software PLAMAHS runs under Windows 95/98/2000. PLAMAHS is provided as a self-installing run time application; therefore no further software is required. - Hardware Remote Stations Main Stations Minimum Recommended Minimum Recommended Processor Pentium II 166Mhz Pentium II 400Mhz Pentium II 300Mhz Pentium II 800Mhz RAM 32MB 64MB 64MB 128MB Hard disk space (1) 100MB 1GB 200MB 5GB Graphics SVGA SVGA SVGA SVGA 1) Also depending on number of facilities, information per facility and number of remote stations If decentralized data entry is used, the exchange of large data files (upto 30-50MB) is necessary. This requires the use a high-capacity storage media such as rewritable CD-ROM, Zip drive or other medium. If PLAMAHS is used in a network environment, each system should be equipped with appropriate network facilities. PLAMAHS features full colour graphics. A digital camera is recommended. Minimum requirements Resolution: VGA (480x640 pixels) Move up Future developments for PLAMAHS. Maintenance module, which will contain: job cards, job history, analysis of maintenance activities spare parts, equipment models and suppliers. Extension of the components for building and supportive infrastructure with additional analysis and reporting facilities. User Guide Synchronization of decentralized datasets through the internet Trend analysis of equipment inventory Link with GIS system Move up			PLAMAHS Facts and Features PLAMAHS Modules PLAMAHS General Features Introducing PLAMAHS in your organization Future developments for PLAMAHS. Healthcare through Appropriate and Reliable Technology Jan Huys, jh@heartware.nl Pieter de Ruijter, pdr@heartware.nl