Ju-Chin Hsu, Chief, Dept. of Material Supply

In November 2019, an outbreak of pneumonia of unknown etiology occurred in Wuhan, China and a novel coronavirus emerged. Within a short span of 2 months, the virus resulted in more than 10 thousand confirmed COVID-19 cases globally, and this rapid transmission has not been seen before this century. Since lockdowns in the center of the epidemic, China, the pandemic has lead to the largest global isolation in modern times. With the outbreak of COVID-19 and activation of emergency response centers, medical units are busy fighting the epidemic and material supply rooms have participated in the logistics supply teams in this war, initiating an epidemic control material inventory war.

Due to the large increase in demand for epidemic control materials, manufacturers are unable to provide sufficient supplies and material sources are diverse due to the circumstances. The chasing of goods by existing suppliers, online search for materials, irregular free distribution by the central government, and donations by people have resulted in diverse epidemic control materials from different companies. With the continuous influx of epidemic control materials, insufficient warehouse space has led to distribution to different areas for storage. In addition, the huge increase in epidemic control and medical needs have resulted in rapid consumption of materials. Therefore, the control of the quantity of  epidemic control materials has become complex and manual counting cannot meet the needs. Hence, an epidemic control material information board was constructed to facilitate rapid understanding of the current material status.

First, materials with the same functions were grouped in the same category before the stock management system database displays the stock of different materials and mean consumption in the last 7 days on the information board. If the number of available materials is less than 10 days worth of supply, its data will be shown in red, indicating that the material may be short in supply and should be replenished. The epidemic control material information board is updated twice a day to precisely show the current material supply status and future needs trends during the ever-changing epidemic.

Figure 1. Epidemic control material information board (website inquiry on current material status)

Figure 2. Epidemic control material information board maintenance and notice webpage