Barcode all medicines and patients, DoH suggests
“Coding for success” was published last week by the
Department of Health |
All medicines and patients in England should be given barcodes that use the coding system developed by GS1 and which is already used for most medicines, the Department of Health has recommended.
In a report
published last week on the use of autoidentification, the
DoH highlights the benefits to patient safety and efficiency of barcodes
and similar technologies. Adoption of these technologies could, the report
argues, reduce medication errors, facilitate the retrieval of medicines
in the event of a recall and prevent counterfeit medicines entering the
supply chain. However, scanning a barcode or tag should not replace communication
between clinicians and patients, the report emphasises.
“The GS1 system should be adopted through the health care system
in England, both for manufactured products and for coding systems used
within health
care settings, such as patient identification codes on wristbands. … It
is for the NHS and industry, working together with technology suppliers,
to take up the challenge and move the agenda forwards,” the
report argues.
“Most medicines already have a GS1 Global Trade Item Number (GTIN) product
code on the patient pack but this needs to be on all medicines,” the report
says. “Medicines not carrying codes are mostly those manufactured or repackaged
in hospital laboratories and manufacturing units, highly specialised medicines,
and some parallel traded products. … A simple product code following the
GS1 coding standard in a barcode format would be straightforward to implement
for the few manufactured items that do not currently have this.”
Coding standards should be developed and applied on a voluntary basis, the DoH
believes, because regulation might restrict technological progress and the development
of the requisite legislation could be a complex and time-consuming process.
Progress on the implementation of autoidentification technologies will be reviewed
by the end of 2008, the DoH says.
|
The
Pharmaceutical Journal
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