Medicine Expiry Tracker: A Web-Based Intelligent System for Automated Pharmaceutical Inventory Monitoring and Alert Management

Abstract— The improper management of medicine expiry dates in pharmacies, hospitals, clinics, and households leads to significant risks including patient harm, financial losses, and environmental pollution caused by unregulated disposal of expired drugs. Manual tracking of pharmaceutical expiry is inherently unreliable and fails to scale across the large inventories maintained in modern healthcare facilities. This paper presents the design and implementation of a web-based Medicine Expiry Tracker system that automates the monitoring, alerting, and reporting of medicine expiry statuses. The proposed system enables users to register, authenticate securely, and manage comprehensive medicine inventory records encompassing batch numbers, manufacturing dates, expiry dates, quantities, and supplier information. An automatic status classification engine continuously evaluates each medicine entry and categorizes items as safe, near-expiry, or expired, triggering configurable email and SMS notifications as alert thresholds are approached. The system incorporates an offline-first design using browser local storage to ensure uninterrupted functionality during network outages, with automated data synchronization to a centralized MySQL database upon connectivity restoration. A responsive web interface built on HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Bootstrap ensures accessibility across diverse devices. Summary analytics and inventory reports support data-driven decision-making. Implemented using a Java-based backend with MySQL database integration, the proposed system addresses the critical gap in affordable and user-friendly pharmaceutical inventory management, particularly for small pharmacies and individual users. Keywords—medicine expiry tracking; pharmaceutical inventory management; web-based healthcare application; automated alert system; FEFO inventory control; offline-first synchronization; patient safety