Sundaymail Editor
Youth Buzz
Fatima Bulla-Musakwa
The GOVERNMENT, through the Zimbabwe Digital Health Strategy (2021-2025), is expanding the use of information and communications technology (ICT) to facilitate access to quality public health services.
This development has elicited a lot of excitement among young and tech-savvy professionals in the sector.
Some innovative youths are developing high-tech digital platforms that can be used to enhance the provision of healthcare services in the country.
Mr Takunda Mukumba, a 34-year-old pharmacist, is already staking a claim in facilitating advancement in the provision of healthcare in Zimbabwe.
He has developed a web-based narcotics register for digital record-keeping of transactions and filing of prescriptions of controlled drugs dispensed.
His platform ensures regulators can remotely audit how pharmacies are dispensing regulated drugs.
It also allows regulators to verify the authenticity of all transactions involving controlled drugs.
Overall, it is geared towards providing the authorities with an online register of all controlled narcotics in the pharmaceutical sector on a single database. Ultimately, this will help to eliminate the proliferation of illicit narcotics.
Mr Mukumba said he came up with the idea of developing the platform in 2015 while working in a pharmacy that moved a lot of controlled and dangerous narcotics.
Pharmacies presently use a manual system that is paper-based to track the distribution of drugs.
The system requires pharmacies to record their transactions and file prescriptions in hard copy.
It not only gives room for clerical errors, but also presents difficulties in reconciling the amount of controlled narcotics.
Mr Mukumba moved quickly to trademark his work with the African Regional Intellectual Property Organisation before creating the system.
After developing the initial version of the platform, he pitched his idea to the authorities at the Medicines Control Authority of Zimbabwe, who provided guidance on how he could streamline it to meet regulatory standards.
He was told that his platform needed to comply with the law and ensure data safety.
In 2021, he received conditional regulatory approval after complying with the requisite standards.
Mr Mukumba claims his innovation makes it possible to red flag suspicious filing of new prescriptions, which may signal that a patient may have developed addiction.
“Most of the narcotics are painkillers like pethidine and morphine,” he said.
“Some contain codeine, which is being abused on the streets by people seeking its mood-altering effects.
“As you know, some narcotics are prone to abuse because they are mood-altering or habit-forming, meaning they can lead to addiction.
“So, they are controlled because a lot of people abuse them either to get high or they become addicted.
“When prescribed properly, they are used to manage pain; it can be for a cancer patient, someone who has had surgery, a car accident or general pain.
“So, people can have them legally when they have a prescription.
“But when a patient begins to abuse narcotics, the system can pick it up.”
The system works like an email account, he said.
Pharmacists sign up to the website, where they get their credentials and account approved.
From there, they input all their transactions involving controlled narcotics into the system.
The records are then transmitted to the backend, where they are accessed by regulatory bodies.
Mr Mukumba is also integrating the platform with drug-dispensing software such that when a pharmacist is dispensing the drugs, the data is automatically recorded onto their dangerous drugs register.
“Now that the system has been approved, I am working on getting pharmacies on board,” he added.
“The system is designed to cater for manufacturers right down to retail pharmacies, so it can capture narcotics inventory for the entire country, assuming that everyone in the pharmaceutical sector is using it.”
The web version, where one has to log into an account, is free, while the integration is paid for.
The desktop version is also available to cater for pharmacies in areas with erratic internet connectivity.
Mr Mukumba, who was also one of the consultants of the Zimbabwe Digital Health Strategy, said just like other young people, he was making his own contribution to ensuring the health sector goes digital and becomes more efficient.
He is a holder of a Master of Science degree in Medical Informatics. He also holds a pharmacy degree.
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