Case Study: Global Pharmaceutical Company
Medgate has provided us with a holistic approach that was lacking across the organisation and will enable Medical, Safety, and Occupational Hygiene to collaborate effectively together.
- Director of Occupational Hygiene, Global Operations
Download a PDF copy here: Global Pharmaceutical Company
Challenge
A global pharmaceutical company sought to revamp and restructure its previous Occupational Health and Safety (OH&S) system for two purposes: a) to combine disparate systems into one integrated global system and; b) to find a vendor that would meet expectations for service excellence and product quality.
a) Disparate Usage:
Prior to using Medgate’s Health and Safety Management Software, the company’s OH&S team had no global system in place, and little to no integration between OH&S functions. In addition, the Medical and Occupational Hygiene software in use at the time (a Medgate competitor) was deployed inconsistently in only a few locations, and a separate system was used for Safety, again in only several sites. These factors, along with those discussed below, led to discord and disorganisation in data management.
b) System and Service Reliability
According to the Director of Occupational Hygiene, the previous Medical/OH software did not consistently meet the organisation’s expectations. The pharmaceutical company needed a provider that could offer an integrated web-based solution with reliable, robust product functionality and excellent service quality. They selected Medgate based on these criteria.
Initially, the company had planned to implement just Medgate’s Medical and Industrial Hygiene Software; Safety was actively pursuing a different off-the-shelf application. When Medical and Hygiene were launched successfully, however, and due to other business drivers, Safety decided to abandon the project in progress and go with Medgate’s Safety Software instead.
Benefits
Though Medgate has been in place only a short while, the Director of Occupational Hygiene has already seen the benefits of an integrated, comprehensive system. He reports that there have already been significant improvements in data consistency, data integrity, quality of data management, and time and systems efficiencies. At one site where all three functions have been implemented, he says the single best benefit is “increased speed of communication”. Information flow between Medical and Safety - such as respirator clearance and incident management - now takes “minutes instead of days”. Furthermore, Medgate’s Safety function has allowed one site to recoup half of one person’s time, as that employee is no longer spending hours manually entering incident management data.
With specific respect to Medgate’s Hygiene component, the Director of OH says it “does what it’s advertised to do: better data management.” He finds the integration between qualitative and quantitative data particularly beneficial, making workflow much more efficient and productive. He also looks forward to the new developments in Medgate’s latest product, GX, where he’ll be able to attach corrective actions to EAS and surveys.
Key Reported Benefits
- Better Data:
- Consistency
- Integrity
- Quality
Increased productivity:
- Efficiencies in time, systems management, and workflow
Improved Communications:
- Increased speed of communications
- Information flow “takes minutes instead of days”
Looking Forward
Since the implementation began under two years ago, Medgate’s Medical and Hygiene product suites have been launched and are in use at over a dozen sites in the US, and Safety is following swiftly behind. Currently, about 30 users have been trained in Hygiene across the US, Puerto Rico, and England and 14 in Medical.
As for the future, the pharmaceutical company recently canvassed its worldwide sites and 96% of the respondents (49 out of 51) have confirmed that they will participate in a Medgate global roll-out. A busy year ahead for the OH&S team!
© Medgate Inc., 2010
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