The Kaduna State Ministry of Health, the Kaduna State Primary Health Care Board (SPHCB), the Kaduna State Health Supplies Management Agency (KADHSMA), the Logistics Management Coordinating Unit (LMCU), the Natview Foundation for Technology Innovation (NFTI), and the Gates Foundation reviewed the Kaduna State Supply Chain Management (SCM) Dashboard at a two-day workshop held at Wells Carlton Hotel & Apartments, Asokoro, Abuja.
The workshop focused on validating the dashboard’s indicators and data sources, assessing data quality, and identifying improvements to strengthen supply chain reporting and support evidence-based decision-making across Kaduna State’s health sector.
During the opening session, the Deputy Director of Pharmaceutical Services (DDPS)/LMCUC, representing the State Ministry of Health, commended NFTI for its work on the dashboard and expressed optimism about its potential to improve supply chain management. The Gates Foundation representative also described the dashboard as a potential game changer and encouraged participants to contribute meaningfully to the final review and validation process.
The Chief Executive Officer of NFTI highlighted persistent gaps in data availability and quality as challenges affecting supply chain operations, emphasising the importance of developing reliable systems that enable stakeholders to monitor performance and make informed decisions.
A presentation by NFTI Health Tech traced the dashboard’s development from conceptualisation in September 2023 through process mapping, beta development, technical validation, and operationalisation, which began in September 2025. The dashboard currently comprises four modules: Home Page, Stock Level Reporting, Financial Review, and Consumption Reporting.
The dashboard walkthrough demonstrated how the Home Page presents facility coverage across different data sources and tracks order cycle time from warehouses to health facilities. Participants also reviewed the Stock Level Reporting module, which covers warehouse reporting, warehouse expiry status, facility stock reporting, and facility expiry status.
A separate presentation by NFTI Data Analytics examined data availability and quality across the dashboard’s principal sources: mSupply through KADHSMA, the National Health Logistics Management Information System (NHLMIS) through LMCU, and reporting from SPHCB.
The review identified challenges with the SPHCB reporting template, which lists all commodities regardless of availability. This increases the burden of data entry and creates opportunities for errors. Participants discussed the need to simplify reporting requirements, improve integration with other systems, and standardise data formats to support more consistent analysis.
The data quality presentation outlined five checkpoints for improving the reliability of information: identity, completeness, structure, consistency, and final review. These checks cover the verification of facility identifiers and file references, the completeness of required fields, the correct formatting of dates and numerical values, consistency across linked fields such as HEFA IDs and product codes, and a final review to prevent errors from entering the dashboard.
Discussions during the dashboard review produced several recommendations for improving the reporting process. Participants agreed to update reporting templates to include dates of payment, batch numbers, and remarks; lock automated columns to prevent accidental changes; and link the opening stock balance for each reporting cycle to the closing stock balance of the previous cycle.
Other agreed actions included adopting a date format that begins with the day, synchronising the facility master list, harmonising tracer commodities across programmes, and capturing the number of requisitions and deliveries. Participants also recommended replacing “Shipped In” and “Shipped Out” with “Received” and “Issued” to improve clarity and consistency in reporting stock movements.
The review reinforced the importance of reliable, standardised data in making the SCM Dashboard useful for supply chain monitoring and decision-making. By incorporating feedback from the institutions responsible for generating, managing, and using supply chain information, NFTI and its partners are working to strengthen the dashboard’s functionality and improve visibility of health commodity availability and movement across Kaduna State.
