Indonesia's SATUSEHAT platform aims to streamline healthcare delivery

Indonesia’s Ministry of Health has launched the SATUSEHAT Logistics application which aims to integrate the country’s vaccine supply chain, all the way from production, procurement, to distribution, across all healthcare facilities.  

The launch event was held on October 15 in Jakarta.  

At the event, Minister of Health, Budi Gunadi Sadikin, said that SATUSEHAT Logistics will make it easier for the government to monitor the availability of vaccines and manage their distribution more efficiently and transparently.

"This application provides complete information on how many and what type of vaccines are available in each healthcare facility, and how many vaccines are needed in each region," he said.  

When reviewing health facilities in the regions, I often get complaints from health care facilities that vaccines are out of stock. With SATUSEHAT Logistics, there should be no more cases like this, he added.

SATUSEHAT Logistics is part of the national health information system ecosystem, SATUSEHAT. Currently, SATUSEHAT Logistics supports the management of more than 800 million doses of vaccines and 100 million doses of medicines in more than 10,000 health facilities spread across 38 provinces. 

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Monitoring the medicines and medical devices stocks 

Minister Budi said SATUSEHAT Logistics will ensure every citizen has equal access to health services and can easily obtain medicines in times of emergency.

He added that this is the reason why SATUSEHAT Logistics does not stop at vaccines but has been entrusted to provide real-time visibility into the availability of medicines and medical devices, especially lifesaving medicines such as cancer drugs.

“Accurate [medicine] data is needed to save lives. There should be no healthcare facility that lack medicines, and we must be able to provide them on time," said Budi. 

He shared that the Covid-19 pandemic taught the government and health sector stakeholders about the importance of a reliable information system to help health workers carry out health treatments quickly. 

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Improving medicine inventory system with SMILE  

Speaking at the same event, the Ministry of Health's Director General of Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices, Rizka Andalusia, explained that SATUSEHAT Logistics will address the fragmented inventory and reporting system for medicines and medical devices.  

SATUSEHAT Logistics will use the Electronic Health Logistics Monitoring and Inventory System (SMILE) model that has been previously developed by Indonesia’s Ministry of Health, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and the Global Vaccine Alliance (Gavi), to check the vaccine supply chain in Indonesia.  

SMILE assisted in vaccine governance during the pandemic, in monitoring stock surpluses and shortages, and balancing vaccine supply and demand at the provincial, district/municipality levels, down to community healthcare facilities.  

“As part of SATUSEHAT Logistics, SMILE can be utilised by health workers to ensure real-time availability of medicines and medical devices," said Rizka.

Currently, SMILE has integrated data on medicines for illnesses such as tuberculosis, malaria and HIV. In the future, the application will integrate data on medicines that are widely needed by patients,  such as hypertension, diabetes and cholesterol drugs.  

Three focuses of SATUSEHAT platform  

Minister Budi explained that there were three main focus areas when developing the SATUSEHAT Logistics service; digital app success, integration opportunities, and patient centricity. The benchmark is not how many apps are released, but whether the health apps are widely used by the community.

"We reflect on the PeduliLindungi which is used by more than 100 million people. If [a new app] is only used by less than one million in one year, then it is not a good app.”  

PeduliLindungi is an app that aims to monitor patients and provide information on vaccination status during the Covid-19 pandemic. The app has been downloaded by 104 million people. 

Various applications created by the Ministry of Health must be integrated under the SATUSEHAT ecosystem with a single sign on that applies nationally as mandated in Presidential Regulation 2023 on National Digital Service Integration, Budi said.

SATUSEHAT Logistics is expected to provide detailed information on how the public can find out the availability of medicines at health service facilities and how to obtain them in its focus on patient-centricity.

"If 60 million mothers can check the availability of HPV vaccine or immunisation vaccine for their babies, I would say this is a successful application," he said. 

This article was originally published in Bahasa Indonesia