The Visible Value Blog

Barcodes have become a universal element on today’s goods and services, allowing quick data acquisition and management, as well as sophisticated tracking and recording. Thanks to their limitless capabilities and versatility, they can be deployed across numerous industries and offer measurable benefits.

It’s hardly a surprise then, that barcodes now play a critical role in one of the most precision-orientated industries: healthcare.

Over the last decade or so, retail has seen a revival of smaller stores and specialty shops – a trend driven by customers demanding a more personal experience. Any time you have an opportunity for an enhanced customer interaction, eventually lessons learned in one market carry over to another. Healthcare is no exception.

Just like they do when they’re in a store, customers – or, in this case, patients – are demanding a more personal level of care.  They expect a hospital they visit to have their health history, from doctor’s visits to prescriptions to known allergies to possible predisposed conditions.  They expect treatment in a timely and attentive manner – and they want that treatment to come with no complications or misdiagnosis. The heightened expectations of patients are so great that many hospitals are adding Chief Experience Officers to ensure a stellar patient experience. 

Barcode scanning at the patient bedside is crucial in preventing deadly errors in medication administration and specimen collection as part of an overall positive patient identification (PPID) solution. 

The moment an infant is born in a hospital, patient identity becomes a critical concern. From making sure the proper medications and treatments are administered to ensuring the right infant goes home with the right mother, there’s a definite need for positive patient identification (PPID) solutions. 

Positive patient ID (PPID) solutions allow healthcare facilities to improve the quality of patient care at every step in the healthcare process from admission to discharge. From helping to prevent medication administration errors to ensuring patient specimens are accurately tracked and processed from collection to the laboratory to results in a physician’s hands, PPID is a powerful tool for improving patient safety. 

Patient safety begins with positive patient identification. That’s why more and more facilities are turning to barcode-enabled wristband systems to help identify patients at every point in the healthcare process.

Technology can, on occasion, be hyped. Gartner even has a methodology for it: The Hype Cycle. But when it comes to the hot topic of now, the Internet of Things (IOT), all talk’s justified: We believe that IOT will transform the way we work across many sectors, especially so in healthcare.

As one of only 15 Level 1 trauma centers in Texas, University Health System’s hospital in San Antonio has one of the busiest emergency departments around, with nearly 70,000 visits each year. To help treat these critical patients as efficiently as possible, the hospital has 7,000 smart IV pumps in its inventory ready to administer lifesaving fluids and medications.

Prescription processing is a huge operation within the healthcare sector. Every year there are approximately one billion prescription items and payments exceed £9billion in the UK alone. As pressure grows on healthcare providers to process an increasing number of prescriptions, healthcare services must strive to achieve efficiency gains in order to satisfy demand, while also maintaining safe delivery of medicines.

When a physician makes a clinical treatment decision, it’s often based on laboratory results. And the integrity of those lab results depends on the accuracy of the specimen identification. 

When specimens are misidentified, the consequences can be grave. Diagnoses are missed. Medication is withheld or the wrong medication is administered. Inappropriate procedures are ordered. In the best case, valuable time is lost.