Introduction

The Consumer Protection Act (CPA) came into effect on 1 April 2011, setting out the minimum requirements to ensure adequate consumer protection.

It firmly places the responsibility for ensuring adequate standards of goods and services in the hands of those who provide them. It also imposes default warranties and indemnities that in many cases exceed those given by the supplier.

The provisions of the Act imply more risk, more admin and more hard work for many businesses. This software has been designed to assist business in not only complying but also in easing the administrative process.

The main purpose of the software is to record the work that has been done for a patient and to print a Certificate of Manufacture detailing the work, materials and manufacturing process.

Certificate of Manufacture

To create a Certificate of Manufacture you will need to create a job for a patient. This job will be assigned a specific Job Number. For each job you will assign a patient and a doctor. You will then add the different laboratory tasks that were performed, for example a 9526 – Post VMK-N. All of these tasks will be set up in the system so that you can select them from a drop down list.

You will have the ability to add multiple laboratory tasks to a job. When printing the certificate all of the tasks as well as the materials used for the task will be listed. In addition to this the Batch Number, Lot Number and Expiry dates for the materials will be shown on the certificate if applicable.

If a laboratory task has settings for the manufacturing process these settings will also be displayed on the Certificate of Manufacture. An example of this could be the temperature setting for a furnace.

For the job you will identify which technicians worked on the job as well as indicating who did the quality check on the job. All of this information will be collated and displayed on the Certificate of Manufacture for the patient. There will be the facility to reprint these certificates if the need arises.

Storage

For each job you will have the capacity to store notes pertaining to the specific job. Here you can record any correspondence between the Laboratory and the Doctor. In addition to this you will also have the ability to store any pictures that are applicable to the job.

System Maintenance

You will be able to maintain all of the options in the system. This will allow you to cater for new tasks and materials in the future. Below is a listing of the options that you will be able to maintain:

· Add and remove doctors

· Add and remove patients

· Add and remove laboratory tasks

· Add and remove laboratory sub tasks

· Add and remove the manufacturing settings for a laboratory task

· Add and remove materials

· Add remove technicians

For the materials that require it you will be able to capture the current batch, lot and expiry details. Each job that you do will be assigned the current batch, lot and expiry details until you update this information to new batch numbers. As you add new batch, lot and expiry details the previous details will be stored for audit purposes.

Backup

All of the data will be stored in a SQL database. There will be functionality to backup the database. The backup function will create a single file. This file can then be copied to a backup device.

Technical

The application will be written in Visual Basic .Net 2010 which is the latest version of Visual Basic released by Microsoft. The data will all be stored in a Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 database. The Express version of the database will be used as it is free for development and deployment and provides for 10 Gig of Storage.

Summary

The CPA software will assist laboratories in complying with the act. Laboratories will be able to store patient/manufacturing information for the required 3 year period. In addition to this it will make the whole process a lot easier to manage.

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