Barcodes may be best way in short term to identify patients, says NPSA
Barcodes could improve patient safety |
Technologies such as barcodes, radio frequency identification and biometrics could help improve patient safety in the NHS by ensuring that patients are correctly identified, according to studies commissioned by the National
Patient Safety Agency.
Barcodes may be the best option for most applications in the short term
but, in the longer term, radio frequency identification (using radio-frequency
transfer of data between a reader and a tag) may provide a better solution
if costs are reduced sufficiently and the technology
gains wider public acceptance. However, in areas such as outpatients,
biometric measures (eg, finger printing and iris scans) could provide
unique benefits.
In a report entitled “Right patient — right care” (PDF 670K), the NPSA pulls together the findings of two studies commissioned
in 2003
to look at the use of manual checking processes and technologies to match
patients with their care, including ensuring the correct medicine is
given to the correct patient. It concludes that there is considerable
scope in the NHS for improving patient safety through the development
of fail-safe methods of manual identification and checking alongside
the use of new technologies.
The NPSA identifies a range of technologies used for identification and
describes cases of hospitals and surgeries using barcodes, finger-print
technology and active radio frequency identification for a variety of
identification tasks. However, it concludes that, at present, none would
meet all the requirements for patient and sample identification in the
NHS, although barcodes may offer the best fit for most applications. |
The
Pharmaceutical Journal
Acrobat
Reader