‘Mereter’ is a software system that is being developed in Sri Lanka to automate the current manual medical report handling method. At the moment, government hospitals are dealing with paper-based hard copy medical reports, and the country lacks a competent management system for handling patient-related documents in the short and long term.
A patient, doctors, pharmacists, and medical laboratory personnel are all involved in the typical process of giving and receiving medical services. In this scenario, multiple medical records are generated and transmitted, including prescriptions and various test reports. As a result, Mereter will now serve as a connecting link between the many parties engaged in issuing and receiving medical reports, as well as preserving a database of all information provided for future reference.
The lack of a comprehensive medical record system, especially in a particular situation like a pandemic, is a setback for a country's progress. As a result, a system is constructed in such a way that these reports can be turned into soft copies that can then be stored, maintained, analyzed, and shared without having to be physically handled. Currently, this product is to be fabricated around the National Hospital, Sri Lanka, but it could also be extended to other government hospitals of similar status if requested.
As a result, the Sri Lankan medical industry is encouraged to advance by bringing software to the fingertips of the local population to benefit all parties engaged in the process.
Mereter has consisted of a mobile application and a web application because there will be two main parties as end clients. Patients that interact with the chosen hospital will have a mobile application put on their phones. The online application would be used by both internal and external laboratories at the hospital (OPD, clinic, pharmacy, and laboratories). The status of the web application would be maintained by a system administrator.
This software would be incredibly useful for elderly people to maintain track of their medical records. This would also benefit the environment by lowering the expenses of paper, printing, and distribution. Furthermore, depending on the data recorded in this system, the selected health organization that will be equipped with this system will have the opportunity to improve their service and performance.
Overall, this application would help to avoid the present hard-copy-based information system by serving as a real-time database access app in the selected hospital, while also meeting the urgent demand for local patient management during and after a pandemic.