OUR CLIENT
The Ministry of Health (MOH) is Singapore’s national healthcare authority. One of MOH responsibilities during the COVID-19 pandemic , was to vaccinate the national population. Key amongst MOH’s various challenges was the compressed delivery timeline, set against a constantly evolving external landscape.
The severity and urgency of the national situation led MOH to seek a value-added and comprehensive analytics solution that allows timely monitoring of ground operations. Critically, while complex in nature, the solution also needed to be developed and deployed quickly; and when required, scaled promptly. The FairPrice Group Supply Chain (FPGSC) Analytics team was engaged by MOH as its partner to support this national need.
SOLUTIONS PROVIDED
FPGSC’s in-house experiences and capabilities in data and intelligence analytics, coupled with its agile ways of working, resonated well with MOH’s pressing priorities at that time. Critically, the FPGSC Analytics team was able to quickly develop, deploy, and scale tailored solutions that met MOH’s needs. Within 3 weeks, the FPGSC Analytics team rolled out its first minimum viable product to support vaccine distribution operations. The strong collaboration enabled MOH to effectively manage the nation-wide vaccination programme by harnessing solutions built on the power of analytics and intelligence systems. Highlights amongst these solutions include:
(A) Ramping Up Data Architecture
- Given the multiple stakeholders and complex data sets involved, a fit-for-purpose data architecture was setup to enable ease of data validation, analysis, and scalability.
- The FPGSC Analytics team set up a secured environment and a dictionary to translate commonly used abbreviations to ensure data integrity, keeping in mind the monitoring and analytics needs, all within 2-3 weeks. This enabled MOH to transfer the data into a robust data warehouse capable of facilitating data processing of a larger scale, to support the ramp up of the vaccination programme.
- Improvements to data integrity included ensuring accuracy of reporting of actual inventory by relying on metrics and advanced analytics algorithms, instead of manual data entries. These helped to reconcile data inconsistencies from disparate data sources.
Learn more: Harnessing the Best of Data for Supply Resilience
(B) Achieving Agility with Self-Service Analytics for High-Level Reporting and Quick Decision-Making
- The FPGSC Analytics team developed and deployed a complete suite of built-to-suit, end-to-end analytics dashboards, and worked with MOH to sensemake with insights generated for scaling up to more complex and advanced analytics solutions. Collectively, this unlocked valuable time and bandwidth for MOH to focus on other operational needs.
- Through the lens of data analytics, MOH could monitor the progress of national vaccination operations, and were able to gain insights through various levels of granularity – anytime, anywhere, with a click of a button.
(C) Optimising Inventory Management
- Vaccination sites needed to hold sufficient inventory of vaccines and medical supplies to meet the daily operational demands.
- The FPGSC Analytics team developed and monitored key metrics to examine and assess stocking level at vaccination sites. The solution could flag out reporting errors from vaccination sites, thereby improving data accuracy for timely stock replenishment.
- The complication in managing different vaccines with varying lifecycles increased with the scaling up of the vaccination programmes.
- The FPGSC Analytics team help to optimise vaccines inventory by syncing the vaccine lifecycles with vaccine administration.
SUPPORTING A MEANINGFUL CAUSE
The COVID-19 vaccination programme is a critical part of Singapore’s fight against the pandemic. FPGSC is humbled and heartened to be part of this national effort – lending our expertise to support a meaningful cause.
TESTIMONIAL BY D(SRM)
FairPrice Group Supply Chain is a valuable partner in the National COVID-19 Vaccination operations. The speedy development and deployment of IT analytics and AI solutions was impressive. The data automation and agile analytics capabilities have facilitated timely decision making, as well as our efforts in optimising inventory management. Christopher Choong Director (Strategic Resource Management), Ministry of Health |