file_04 · SUPPLY-CHAIN
MedPath
● NATIONAL WINNER · AVISHKAR S3
Barcode-driven hospital drug inventory and supply-chain platform with real-time, unit-level traceability.
problem
Hospital drug supply chains run on paper and memory: stockouts of critical medication, zero real-time visibility into where drugs are, and manual errors that send the wrong drug to the wrong ward. The consequences are delayed treatment and compromised patient safety.
architecture
approach
- 01 Designed a three-module system mirroring how drugs actually move: Store (inbound — stock entry and unique barcode generation per unit), Pharmacy (verification and dispatch against ward requests), and Ward/Nurse (request, scan-to-confirm delivery, and consumption marking).
- 02 Every physical handoff is a barcode scan that updates a synchronized inventory database — producing end-to-end unit-level traceability from intake to patient, with automatic low-stock alerts for the pharmacy.
- 03 Shipped both surfaces: web dashboards for store and pharmacy staff (Flask, Jinja, Bootstrap) and a Flutter mobile app with barcode scanning for nurses — built for stressed, non-technical users.
stack
Python Flask SQLAlchemy SQLite Flutter Barcode scanning REST APIs
impact
- Winning build at the Avishkar Season 3 national hackathon (Medical & Health track) — recognized as a practical, deployable solution.
- Replaces manual registers with scan-based state transitions: zero-mismatch dispatch, assured delivery confirmation, and complete audit trail per drug unit.
key learnings
- Modeling the physical world is the real design work — the database schema had to mirror how drugs physically move between store, pharmacy, and ward.
- In healthcare tooling, reliability and simplicity beat features: a nurse mid-shift gets one big button and a scanner, not a settings page.