When COVID-19 came to Saskatchewan, it amplified the need for accurate and timely data regarding personal protective equipment (PPE) from multiple sources across the province. Fortunately, many of the necessary tools for an integrated provincial response had already been developed as part of the forthcoming Administrative Information Management System (AIMS).

In times of global supply shortages due to the pandemic, interfaces and dashboards from AIMS are helping keep patients and health-care employees safe. Before COVID-19, the staff at AIMS were focusing on developing dashboards to track inventory on a provincial level and provide in-depth usage reporting from all facilities. From these dashboards, the AIMS team was able to produce crucial reports for the COVID-19 response, such as the current level of PPE inventory on hand, how fast PPE is being used, and how long inventory will last.

Even though AIMS is still in development, the Saskatchewan health-care system was able to use some of AIMS’ interfaces to monitor and pull data from various existing inventory management systems. This insight helped ensure that PPE was available at the right time and in the right place.

“A system like AIMS is designed to give the health system province-wide data which is required for a single health authority and for a health system responding to a pandemic,” says 3sHealth CEO Mark Anderson. “Rather than taking a regionalized approach, Saskatchewan was able to respond quickly as a province. The AIMS tools played a crucial role in ensuring we had visibility into our provincial inventory levels of personal protective equipment. This gave decision makers the insight they needed to move product across the province and to place timely orders for new inventory.”

The AIMS project is a provincial health system initiative involving the Saskatchewan Health Authority, 3sHealth, eHealth, the Saskatchewan Cancer Agency, SAHO Inc., and affiliated organizations. The project will integrate financial, supply chain, payroll, and human resource management information by replacing 82 non-integrated systems. Learn more here.

“The functionality that AIMS displayed around managing personal protective equipment is just the start,” says Robbie Peters, Vice President Finance & Chief Financial Officer of the Saskatchewan Health Authority and Chair of the AIMS Executive Steering Committee. “I am excited to see all the other ways AIMS improves the lives of patients and health-care employees across Saskatchewan when it launches.”