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Jump Technologies, a software specialist in cloud-based mobile solutions for inventory management in hospitals, announced its JumpStock platform can now be used with a two-bin approach to supply management.
Aimed at reducing the time nurses spend locating and scanning supplies, reducing stock-outs, the 2Bin feature with the JumpStock offering could also help hospitals reduce the cost of overstocked inventory, increase visibility to supply data and drive greater accuracy of product velocity reporting.
“The best thing technology is doing for hospitals is helping standardize business processes and driving better access to data,” Cheryl Flury, vice president of marketing for Jump, told eWEEK. “Though hospitals will always keep their focus on patient care – appropriately so – it’s important they also address the business side of their organizations and look for ways to standardize their processes, which helps them reduce costs and improve quality. A one-off world is no way to improve quality.”
JumpStock’s 2Bin feature eliminates the need for clinicians to record items being pulled from inventory. The 2Bin approach is based on a simple concept whereby each item in a hospital’s inventory is placed in two separate bins, placed end to end on a shelf.
The two bins combined contain the total amount of inventory required for the days of supply a department or unit plans to keep on hand.
Throughout the day, staff members take what they need from the bins. When a bin is emptied it is placed on the top shelf and the next bin is pulled forward.
“JumpTech is focused on helping hospitals get visibility to the inventory that’s stocked and used across their organization. Nurses often report they can’t find the supplies they need when they need them,” Flury said. “Accurate velocity reporting will let hospitals validate or reset their purchasing for every item they buy. And seeing actual product usage will help ensure they’re buying on the right contract tier – if they can improve their tier, they can reduce their price.”
At specified times, supply technicians scan the barcodes on the empty bins using a compact “key-fob” scanner or the JumpStock mobile application, which can be used on any Apple or Android device.
The platform automatically calculates the order to refill the empty bins based on reorder levels an organization has established in the system.
With JumpStock’s open platform, orders are submitted directly to a hospital’s vendors, the materials or enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, or any other preferred ordering system.
When an order arrives, the supply technician refills the bins and scans any remaining empty bins.
“Historically, hospitals have been burdened by overly complicated business processes. Then we see new technology come onto the scene, but it’s been cost-prohibitive and time-consuming to implement, with a lot of expense associated with incremental hardware investments,” Flury said. “So far, it’s been difficult for new technology to solve problems. But now we see more cloud-based solutions, more opportunities for data sharing and aggregation, more light-weight integration spanning current systems – all of these advances will be part of the health IT evolution in the coming years.”