The asset-tracking environment in hospitals has become a sci-fi world of radio waves, scanning lasers and Wi-Fi signals, all designed to let staff know the whereabouts of people and property within the facility. Yet while automated logistics has netted benefits for individual facilities, the different formats in use has caused the supply chain to be a convoluted, inefficient and even unsafe process.
As national hospital group purchasing organization Premier describes: “The majority of products in America, from peanut butter to bolts and screws, having numbering systems that enable bar codes or radio-frequency identification for tracking purposes, no such uniform system exists for medical devices. This means that patients today face a significant risk that a recalled medical device could be inadvertently used in their treatment because of the inability to rapidly locate it in the hospital.”
San Diego-based Premier is one of several healthcare alliances spearheading a standardization drive that will require all tracking systems to use the same global location numbers, global trade item numbers and global data synchronization network. Congress last year passed legislation requiring the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to put in place a mandatory national unique device identification system. In July, Premier became the first group purchasing organization to endorse the GS1 supply chain standard, which will be required for its supplier contracts.
Use of the standards will allow for definitive identification of medical products and devices, tracking them through the healthcare system and placing them within a standardized product database, enabling rapid communication about any potential issues. Full adoption of the GS1 standards within contracting and operations at Premier will be implemented over the next five years. The plan is to have all supply chain parties adhering to the global location numbers by 2010 and GS1 standards by 2012.
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