CHAPTER ONE
1.1    INTRODUCTION
Lack of knowledge of the availability of some drugs in hospitals can affect the treatment of patients in hospitals. The hospital inventory management system is a system that maintains inventories of drugs. It is stored in the system database, which helps the Hospital management, Staff, Doctors and Nurses in taking absolute care of the patients in the Hospital. Hospital inventory management system also involves the clinical sphere of healthcare service performance. Clinical errors in drug prescription and administration, for example, are always possible, depending on human factors and procedural issues.
Computerized inventory management systems have the capability to manage system and process large volumes of data quickly and provide reports that will help the health care facility do a better job of managing its equipment. Materials management is an important issue for healthcare systems because it influences clinical and financial outcomes.
1.2    PROBLEM STATEMENT
Although there is an improvement in health care delivery practiced by the named hospital when compared with the crude way known to people years back, there are also some problems facing the hospital when trying to render effective services to patients. These includes:-
i.    Lack of good record keeping: - Since there are no proper records keeping, it is difficult for the pharmacist to know the number of drugs supplied, with date of reorder, and the number of drugs dispensed, with date for effective auditor.
ii.    Tedious stock taking: - The pharmacist will need to count every drug one after the other daily, weekly or monthly as the case may be in other to ascertain the number of drug remaining in stock and this process could be tedious.
iii.        Stock out: - Most times, the stock room always witness stock out, especially when a patient need some drugs. This system enables the pharmacist to know exactly when to reorder such drugs.
iv.    Loss of drugs: - Since there is no proper record keeping in the hospital, the pharmacist can divert some drugs for personal use without the hospital management noticing it.
v.    Improper management of Hospital equipment: - Equipment in healthcare involves two kinds of item clusters: drugs (or medicines) and medical devices. Medical devices, such as surgical kit and apparatus. These items can be improperly managed by the Hospital staffs if inventory is not taken.
1.3    AIM AND OBJECTIVES
The aim of this project is to design and implement a hospital inventory management system and the objectives are:
i.    To have a database for faster and better hospital services.
ii.    To maintain and process large volumes of data quickly and provide reports that will help the Hospital management manage its properties.
iii.    To have a simple and easy-to-operate system.
iv.    To report and store daily clinical activities.
1.4    METHODOLOGY
In this project, a Java programming language is used in the design of the Hospital inventory system and MySQL is used for the database in storing and taking account on the inventories.