General Plugins

This page details plugins which are suitable for use by any organization.

Population-based forecasting for vaccines🔗

Overview🔗

The Population-based forecasting for vaccines plugin does three things:

1. It calculates the Forecast demand for vaccines based on the population of each facility
2. It calculates the Target stock that each facility should have to service their Forecast demand
3. It offers a Suggested quantity that should be ordered to maintain the Target stock levels

These values are calculated based on the following formulas:

Forecast demand

The forecast demand is given in doses per month and is defined as follows:

Target stock

Target stock is the stock in doses required to cover the supply interval and is given by the following formula:

Suggested quantity

The suggested quantity to order is given in doses:

The Target stock and Suggested quantity are then displayed to the facility user to assist with decision-making while making an order for new stock:

Configuration🔗

In order to provide the Forecast demand, the Target stock and the Suggested quantity, key indicators must be input by the user in the system.

These include:

Country demographics

You must have a demographics indicator created and then assigned to the vaccine course in the 'Target Demographic' field (see Manage > Demographics to configure an indicator)

National Immunization Schedule

Create a national immunization schedule and then a vaccine course. Include the item to forecast in the course and create at least one dose for that course. (see Programs > Immunizations)

Store properties

The following properties must also be configured:

• Population coverage
• supply interval
• buffer stock

see Manage > Store properties for details.

Item

The item to forecast must be designated as a 'vaccine'. See the note for 'Is a vaccine' on the documentation page.

Notes🔗

Note 1: Enabling the Population-based forecasting for vaccines plugin will replace the AMC forecasting method with the Population-based forecasting method. The AMC value will still be displayed to the facility user but the Suggested quantity will not use the AMC value to make its calculations.

Note 2: The Forecast demand is calculated for the Vaccine course, not the Vaccine item. This means that the Target stock and Suggested quantity values also apply to the Vaccine course and not to the Vaccine item.

This is important to note because multiple vaccines items may be associated with one vaccine course. Therefore, if an order is being placed for multiple vaccine items associated with the same vaccine course then the system will display the same Target stock and Suggested quantity for each vaccine item in that order.

In other words, the system does not take into account stock on order for other vaccine items when displaying a Suggested quantity for a vaccine item.

Note 3: the Forecast demand is not displayed explicitly to the facility user, but the values can be reviewed in the mSupply Dashboard