One major goal of the project was to improve patient safety and significantly minimise (or even eliminate) medicationrelated errors.

In collaboration with GS1 Poland and other partners, the hospital implemented new processes supported by GS1 identification standards encoded in GS1 DataMatrix barcodes. IT systems were integrated to support the new processes. Now medical orders can be automatically generated (called an e-order). As medications are administered to patients, GS1 barcodes are scanned to ensure the right patient takes the right medicine, at the right time. This information is also recorded in the patient’s electronic medical record. As medicines as used, they are replenished for optimal inventory management.

All pharmaceutical companies, agents, and suppliers now supply pharmaceuticals to DHA with a Global Trade Item Number (GTIN) and the 2D DataMatrix.

By leveraging GS1 standards and adopting a fully integrated system for its pharmaceutical transactions, DHA has made crucial advancements in providing quality services in the provision of medicine.

As a result, Unique Device Identification (UDI) was introduced. Additional countries have also enacted regulations. For UDI to be effective, it necessitates a harmonised and consistent approach.

Johnson & Johnson Supply Chain (JJSC) has a comprehensive UDI program enabling it to meet compliance milestones. Collaboration, data management and product identification are key components. JJSC supports the use of GS1 standards and assigns Global Trade Item Numbers (GTINs) to Johnson & Johnson company medical devices.

For global consistency, it is essential to share global information on products directly from manufacturers to hospitals, using a single format.

To support manufacturers and hospitals in the digitisation of product information, Resah implemented the first interoperable electronic catalogue for the French health sector: eCat-Santé. Based on GS1 standards, this catalogue enables the input and output of comprehensive, standardised and up-to-date product information. The solution provides a win-win by reducing the time and costs associated with product information management.

In China’s IVD-reagent supply chains, there was no consolidated material coding standard.

This caused a series of problems, such as information inconsistency between upstream and downstream enterprises, the lack of traceability in supply chain processes, human-input information that was prone to errors, and high costs with low efficiencies.

To address these issues, DIAN and the Zhejiang Institute of Standardization implemented an IVD-reagent solution based on GS1 standards. They labelled each IVD-reagent individual unit with a GS1 Global Trade Item Number® (GTIN®) and key attributes encoded in a GS1 DataMatrix barcode. They also linked upstream and downstream enterprise information to the GS1 identifiers, as well as upgraded healthcare providers’ supply processing distribution (SPD) systems for compatibility with the GS1 standards.

DIAN has improved overall operating efficiency, reduced logistics information errors and maintained the traceability of IVD-reagents. GS1 standards have also eliminated the labourious work of applying non-standard proprietary codes in hospitals. Since DIAN is manually labelling the IVD-reagents, it is continuing its work to ensure that the labelling is eventually completed by IVD-reagent manufacturers.

This inconsistency in measured outcomes poses concern when evaluating the effects of barcoding on patient safety and quality of care.

The objective of this work was to define a minimum, internationally appropriate set of patient safety outcome measurements for evaluating, generating evidence and improving the implementation of GS1 standards.

The trust runs two hospitals: the Royal Derby Hospital, which is a busy acute teaching hospital and London Road is the trust’s community hospital.

DTH has implemented GS1 standards throughout their operating theatres by scanning GS1 barcodes for full traceability of caregivers, equipment, products and patients as procedures and overall care are performed. Theatre processes are now much more efficient, saving time and costs as well as improving patient safety. The product recall process is also much more precise and efficient; a recall once took up to 50 hours on average per patient and now only takes 30 minutes per patient.

The Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Center in Miami, Florida, once spent countless hours each week manually entering product codes into systems for hundreds of medical implants and other products that were received, placed into inventory, and ultimately used in patient procedures and care.

To stay on top of correct product names and expiration dates, to prevent inadvertent human error, and to positively impact patient safety—a better system was needed.

Although implementation of the U.S. FDA UDI Rule is ongoing, according to the VA hospital, nearly 90% of products used by their operating rooms have such barcodes today. As medical devices and implants are received, the Miami VA hospital scans the barcodes, capturing this valuable product information automatically. The information is then stored in the hospital’s Medical Device Management System (MDMS) called UDITracker®, provided by Champion Healthcare Technologies, a GS1 US Solution Partner.

Hull University Teaching Hospital (HUTH) wanted to replace its manual and paper-based processes with automated ones that would capture data at points of patient care, connecting the data and linking it directly to each patient. Routine and recall processes took significant time away from staff caring for patients.

HUTH defined a new model focused on the patient and Scan4Safety principles, implementing GS1 identification standards and barcodes throughout the entire patient care journey. Barcodes are scanned to capture information such as date, time, staff member, patient and location of interventions—from the patient’s admission to discharge.

Clinical supply chain and information system professionals joined together to develop processes for using GS1 standards to automatically and accurately identify products in its operating room (OR), while recording them in patient records required by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid (CMS) and Office of National Coordinator (ONC).

The ability to uniquely identify products used throughout the healthcare supply chain will not only enable CentraState to satisfy regulatory requirements, but also help the hospital increase patient safety, improve staff productivity, achieve precise and inclusive capture of costs, and continue to build community trust.