Development and Evaluation of a Pharmaceutical Stock Management System Using Electronic Medical Record Information

The development of an efficient pharmaceutical stock management system is crucial for reducing hospital expenses. This study aimed to develop and evaluate a novel stock management system using electronic medical record (EMR) information. The system targeted 132 pharmaceutical items priced at 1,000 yen or higher and employed a medical data warehouse system (CLISTA!® ver3.5) to automatically extract outpatient appointment and prescription data from EMRs. This data was processed using FileMaker Pro® ver16 to calculate the maximum predicted prescription demand and its corresponding date, facilitating precise stock control. The inventory sufficiency rate was defined as the percentage of days from February to July 2024 when the predicted prescription volume remained within stock levels. Furthermore, financial losses owing to drug price revisions were analyzed between fiscal years 2022 and 2023. The system successfully predicted 74％ of the prescriptions, achieving an inventory sufficiency rate of 99.9％. The total inventory stock value decreased by ¥10,049,397, and financial losses owing to drug price revisions were reduced by 61.7％ (¥2,039,744) in FY2023 compared with FY2022. Furthermore, the introduction of the system significantly reduced the workload of pharmacists. The time spent on stock management decreased from 10 h per week (two pharmacists) to 2 h per week (one pharmacist), resulting in an 80％ reduction in operational hours. These results suggest the system’s effectiveness in optimizing pharmaceutical stock control, reducing economic losses, and improving operational efficiency.