The Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust supply process was not routinely closed loop, and required the re-keying of important information from one system to another. This open-loop system increased the likelihood of human error.

In an effort to reduce the number of medication dispensing errors, the trust introduced barcoding into their dispensing process. They then assessed the prevented error rates, the speed of dispensing and staff perception, to review efficacy.

It was a challenge to validate the endorsement and approval of the Ministry of Health and Social Protection to carry out a pilot test and make use of the Unique Device Identification (UDI) device identifier (DI) to identify medical devices in Colombia, as well as align healthcare providers with the proposal.

A public consultation was held to review the draft resolution of the proposed semantic standard for UDI. Representatives from GS1 Colombia, the National Association of Businessmen of Colombia (ANDI) and National Federation of Merchants (FENALCO) started meeting with Colombia’s Ministry of Health and Social Protection (MoH) to identify key points about why and how it would implement UDI, according to the needs of the government and healthcare industry.

Working with multiple stakeholders across the company’s supply chain, Alexion led the way to implement GS1 standards, align processes, integrate systems and manage the necessary change for full traceability.

Alexion chose GS1 standards to uniquely identify, barcode and label packages and individual units of Soliris, a medicine selected for the traceability pilot. As the packages of Soliris traveled throughout the supply chain, employees and caregivers scanned the GS1 DataMatrix barcodes to capture and share information with all stakeholders.

Prosthesis storage and replacement orders were also resulting in logistics costs for the hospital.

With the goal of improving patient traceability, reducing errors and cutting the administrative workload for medical and nursing staff, Hospital Universitari Vall d’Hebrón decided to implement GS1 standards in surgical prosthesis management.

The system records detailed information about medical products used for surgical operations—the product’s Global Trade Item Number® (GTIN®), lot number and other valuable data—all by scanning source-provided GS1-128 barcodes.

By capturing information about which medical products are used on what patients, the system has helped the hospital significantly improve medical safety and increase responsiveness for recalls. In addition, the hospital has reduced costs associated with data recording and enhanced the accuracy of reimbursement claims.

Year on year, the hospital has been generating a negative financial result, so one of the initiatives aiming to improve its financial standing was the analysis of the cost of use of medications per ward and per patient – its second largest cost.

One of the first decisions was to begin implementing barcodes in the issuing of medication. The application of automatic data collection methods in the hospital’s logistics plays a crucial role in the process of streamlining the selected intra-hospital logistics processes, which also contributes to improving the hospital’s economic efficiency.

Lack of standardisation for the hospital’s inventory made it very difficult to have a clear view of operating room stock and the medical devices used during surgeries.

Moreover, the hospital’s Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) did not allow accurate traceability of high-risk items such as implants.

Using GS1 standards, the hospital can now unambiguously identify inbound materials and medical devices used for each patient, not only in the OR but also in the Cardiac Catheterisation Laboratory and the Interventional Radiology Department.

The company created a cross-functional team, including GS1 Solution Providers, 1WorldSync and LANSA.

A multi-phased project was launched that identified and integrated device data from diverse systems across the company and included processes to assign and validate each device’s Global Trade Item Number® (GTIN®) and attributes on their way to the FDA’s Global UDI Database (GUDID). Teleflex also achieved full Global Data Synchronisation Network® (GDSN®) operability for trusted data-sharing with trading partners. Now, Teleflex can provide accurate, complete and validated product data to regulatory bodies and trading partners alike, including healthcare providers.

In Bulgaria, projects to follow the European Union’s (EU) Falsified Medicines Directive (FMD) were a massive undertaking that spanned all stakeholders in the supply chain—manufacturers, wholesalers, hospitals and pharmacies.

GS1 standards, specifically a Global Trade Item Number® (GTIN®) encoded in GS1 DataMatrix barcode, would need to be applied to each and every prescribed pharmaceutical pack for scanning, from manufacturer to pharmacist when dispensing the medicine.

In addition to GS1 standards, the Bulgarian Medicines Verification System (BgMVS) was created and is connected to the European hub of the European Medicines Verification Organisation (EMVO). GTINs are uploaded by manufacturers to the European hub so that when pharmacies dispense medicines, the pack can be certified as an “authentic” medicine.

Most medical devices in Japan have a GS1 barcode on their packages. However, due to the lack of functionality in electronic health record (EHR) systems to effectively use barcodes, medical staff in hospitals often face difficulties when identifying products used for surgeries, and it takes time to calculate the fee-forservice claim.

The National Center for Global Health and Medicine (NCGM) faced the same situation.

NCGM organised a team with members from medical device suppliers, solution providers, many departments in the hospital and GS1 Japan. The team has modified the hospital’s EHR system and other related IT systems to provide an easy–to-use system that can process all data in a GS1 barcode.