News
NHS hospitals adopting barcode and RFID technology to improve
patient safety
10 July 2008
A project promoting the use of technology to improve safety in
patient identification and tracking, medicines and surgical instruments
is gaining success in hospitals across England.
The Automatic Identification and Data Capture (AIDC) project has now
reached 110 hospitals nationwide. AIDC is being managed by NHS
Connecting for Health (NHS CFH) with identification-standards
organisation GS1UK in conjunction with the National Patient Safety
Agency and NHS Purchasing and Supply Agency.
NHS CFH funds the fees for all English hospitals to join GS1UK and
also funds project management, training and dedicated services.
Autoidentification can solve many healthcare issues from procurement
and supply chain matters through to treatment of individual patients.
Due to the high level of interest and large number of applications
received, the AIDC project has focused on 3 key areas: patient
identification; the manufacturing and repackaging of medicines within
the NHS and the decontamination of sterile surgical instruments.
This work has motivated NHS trusts into signing up to this project
and with 110 hospitals now having joined, the impact of these
initiatives continues to grow.
Neil Lawrence, Project Manager for AIDC says: "Our vision is to
enable the deployment of RFID or bar-coding systems across all
hospitals, pharmacies, clinics and healthcare centres. Although it may
be a major investment for some, it represents a means of making the NHS
experience cleaner, safer and more effective as well as a long term cost
saving."
Ann Keen MP, parliamentary under secretary for health services, has
provided support to the initiative by recommending the use of GS1 codes
throughout the healthcare system, both for manufactured products and for
coding systems used within healthcare settings.
Speaking at the recent Patient Safety Congress in London she said,
“We want to support the use of technology where this can lead to service
improvement and are actively encouraging the uptake of coding in
healthcare. We believe that this can help staff do what they want to do
— deliver the right treatment, to the right patient, at the right time.
We know it works — patient safety is improved and, therefore, we have
recommended the use of GS1 codes.”
“Growing support from government and NHS agencies has helped to drive
the adoption of our initiative. In the last year, we have seen a 22%
increase in the number of members in the healthcare sector,” said Gary
Lynch, chief executive for GS1 UK. “We are delighted with the widespread
adoption of the initiative that is helping to improve patient safety in
hospitals across the UK.”
Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust has been using barcoding
technology in supplies management since 2000 and found major benefits,
including: reduction of stock by nearly £1m, reduction in staff time
taken on ordering — freeing up nurses for other duties — and reduction
in order-processing costs, order errors and obsolescence.
GS1's standards will shortly be adopted by the NHS Information
Standards Board for compulsory use throughout the service, lending
further authority to these important identification technologies.
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