Undersecretary Ma. Carolina Vidal-Taiño and other health officials visited Catanduanes last week to monitor the implementation of the electronic Logistics Management Information System (eLMIS) that was launched at the Provincial Health Office in 2024.
Last June 2, 2025, the DOH official, who heads the Supply Chain Management Cluster, visited the PHO, its provincial warehouse, the Eastern Bicol Medical Center and the Virac Rural Health Unit where the medicine and equipment supply chain system is being implemented.
In the afternoon, Usec. Taiño presided over a workshop with the Bicol Center for Health Development and the Catanduanes PHO on the regional eLMIS implementation, particularly at the hospital and municipal health offices, and discussion of the Direct Delivery Strategy and the management of the provincial warehouses.
The following day, the review focused on the eLMIS accomplishments at the team, division and office levels as well as updates on key interventions in the National Strategic Plan for the Integrated Supply Chain Management.
The eLMIS centralizes the inventory and distribution of its medicines, vaccines, and medical devices and equipment nationwide from DOH warehouses/hubs to local government units’ health centers.
It streamlined supply planning, purchasing and distribution of health commodities across all levels of supply chain entities from central warehouses, regional warehouses and district warehouses to service delivery points or health facilities.
With the use of the system, improvements in procurement are achieved as the centralized inventory will provide information on availability of specific medicines and vaccines, among others.
It provides a more efficient means of collecting, organizing, and reporting data for performing operational and strategic procurement and supply chain management.
At different levels of the supply chain, eLMIS manages procurement, shipments, warehouses, inventory, stock allocation, and distribution at different levels of the supply chain.
In an interview, Provincial Health Officer II Dr. Hazel Palmes said Catanduanes was the first province in the country to implement eLMIS in a hospital and the first in the Bicol region to do so at the RHU level.
In the system, one will be able to track how the commodities move from the central logistics to the RHUs, including their individual allocations, she stated.
“Mas madali mong makita kung ito ba near expiry, kailangan mo na i-mobilize yung gamot, ibibigay mo na sa hospitals, or kung hindi naman nagagamit ng hospitals, pwede mo siyang i-transfer sa ibang hospitals para mas mapadali po yung monitoring,” she said.
Palmes added that the electronic system needed people, so the PHO enabled the training and designation of existing personnel to handle it at the Eastern Bicol Medical Center, the six district hospitals and RHUs.
“Some are fully functional while others are partially functional due to internet connectivity issues and lack of human resource,” she clarified.
For example, the PHO chief said, the regional office wants to download TB medicines and will notify the PHO, who in turn will have to check eLMIS if the offer is to be accepted or rejected especially if the current stock is enough or near expiry date.
Once it is accepted, the delivery will have to be allocated to the RHUs, with the system showing which units have enough or lacking TB medicines.
Ideally, the system will ensure that none of the medicines or drugs delivered to Catanduanes will not expire in storage but this would certainly minimize loss, Dr. Palmes explained.
The challenge for DOH is to make sure that the deliveries pass through the PHO because until now, there are shipments that are not sent to the provincial warehouse but direct to the RHU, she added.
“Kasi, si PHO yung titingin kung saan yung wala, saan yung meron, saan yung oversupply, saan yung slow-moving,” she stressed.
Deliveries have to be manually encoded at the start, so that the health facilities will only need to dispense, she said.
The provincial government will have to encode commodities coming from them in real time, so that the inventory will also be in real time so that decision makers in the healthcare system will be able to mobilize the commodities appropriately to where they are really needed.
To solve the issue of poor internet connectivity, we will give Starlink satellite internet service to all RHUs, Palmes disclosed, as all the hospitals already have theirs.
During the workshop, the PHO suggested that the DOH develop a single, open system where the other systems like iHOMIS and iClinicSys could be integrated or connected in order to save effort and time.
Dr. Palmes likewise stated that the provincial government has to comply with the DOH’s recommendation to create needed plantilla positions to handle devolved health functions
Due to lack of funds for the creation of new positions, the PHO and its partners at the municipalities have resorted to designated existing personnel to handle eLMIS as well as employ job order workers to at least comply with the DOH requirements.
Asked to rate the system’s implementation, the PHO chief said it is still at 75% because what is needed is for the system to be used by barangay health workers and midwives through a mobile app to be used in dispensing medicines through the use of barcodes.
The same could be used by nurses at hospitals as its use would allow those in charge to know in real time how many has been dispensed from the medicine inventory, she added.
“It’s a learning process, that is why they came here to know our concerns so we can contribute to improving the system. In return, it will benefit us, make our work easier,” Dr. Palmes emphasized.