Endorsements
A number of regulatory authorities and other organisations have endorsed the GS1 System of Standards and recommend its implementation in the Healthcare sector.
These are some examples:
National E-Health Transition Authority (Australia)
"NEHTA endorses the adoption of global standards with the allocation of GTIN’s in Healthcare. The Healthcare GTIN Allocation Rules, developed by GS1 Healthcare, provide a solid basis for ensuring consistent and best-practice implementation of GTIN’s to support and uphold standards around ensuring and maintaining data integrity in the global Healthcare community." Ken Nobbs, Manager - Supply Chain, National E-Health.
Public Health Agency (Canada)
The Public Health Agency of Canada has set up a project to improve the safe use of vaccines by incorporating bar codes into vaccine product labelling. The PHAC acknowledge that global standards should be used in national implementation plans and are actively supporting the GS1 Healthcare activities.
Council of Europe
"European Healthcare organisations and other related stakeholders should require labelling of every single unit of use of all licensed medicinal products. The data matrix bar code should contain a GS1 GTIN in addition to the expiry date and batch number."
April 2007 "Creation of a better medication safety culture in Europe" Report, Council of Europe’s Expert Group on Safe Medication Practices
UNI.H.A in France
UNI.H.A is a network of 52 hospitals in France with a total of 115,000 beds. UNI.H.A decided to use GS1 Standards to enable its AUREA e-Procurement platform and will systematically use GS1 Standards for every new project related to traceability, logistics or supply chain processes.
ACL (France)
ACL, the French technical association which federates the whole of the Healthcare profession outside the drug, approved a numbering scheme for medical devices based on GS1 Standards.
http://www.acl.tm.fr/acl-web/quelCode.do
New Zealand Ministry of Health
The New Zealand Medication Safety Project is an initiative of the New Zealand Ministry of Health to reduce medication errors by introducing bedside verification of medications using a standardised (GS1) barcode point of care system in all public hospitals.
View consultation document, cost analysis and presentation
Swissmedic (Swiss Agency for Therapeutic Products)
Swissmedic is the authority in charge of the narcotic control in Switzerland. Narcotic control is managed since 1995 by law with the use of GS1 identifications for trade items, substances and locations.
UK Department of Health
The Department of Health is recommending that the GS1 System should be adopted throughout the Healthcare system in England […] and presents an action plan calling for engagement in the GS1 global Healthcare User Group.
February 2007 Policy Guidance Document, UK Department of Health
US FDA
The FDA selected the GS1 System for all unit dose drugs and biologics.
US FDA Bar Code Label Requirement For Human Drug Products and Blood
US Healthcare Supply Chain Standards Coalition (HSCSC)
"In a major step aimed at making Healthcare more affordable while strengthening patient safety and outcomes, HSCSC is calling for industry-wide adoption of organisational and product identifiers from GS1".
For more information, visit www.hscsc.org HSCSC’s position on GS1 Standards.