GS1 Healthcare Reference Books

Safer, more efficient care starts with a simple scan.

GS1 standards are enabling the transformation of healthcare around the world

Complete and accurate master product data are essential for healthcare providers to deliver the best possible care to their patients. Ideally, product master data should flow freely and efficiently from manufacturers to healthcare providers.

Fresenius Kabi, a global healthcare company, launched an ambitious program to support healthcare providers and become the first in its industry to tag vials of medication using Electronic Product Code-enabled radio frequency identification (EPC/RFID) technology.

The company’s goals: Each container of medication would have an encoded EPC that carries the globally unique product code, unique serial number, expiration date and batch/lot number. The product code would consist of the Global Trade Item Number® (GTIN®) with an embedded National Drug Code (NDC), which identifies the manufacturer. The RFID tags would have to comport with the dielectric properties of the drugs, not impede manufacturing speed, and eventually be brought to scale across the company’s extensive portfolio of pharmaceuticals.

Hull University Teaching Hospital (HUTH) wanted to replace its manual and paper-based processes with automated ones that would capture data at points of patient care, connecting the data and linking it directly to each patient. Routine and recall processes took significant time away from staff caring for patients.

North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust began its GS1 standards-adoption journey as one of six selected demonstrator sites involved in the Department of Health and Social Care’s Scan4Safety programme.

To fully meet the requirements of the Scan4Safety programme, a point-of-care scanning solution was necessary to facilitate the convenient and practical capture and recording of events taking place during each episode of patient care. However, when implementing and using scanning at the point of care, staff found that there was no all-encompassing scanning solution available to meet their needs.

The Netcare Group (Netcare) in South Africa operates the largest private acute care hospital, primary healthcare, emergency medical services, mental health and renal care networks in the country. With a continuous focus on providing the best and safest health and care to each patient, Netcare wanted to transform its paper-based business and clinical processes to ones that are automated, digital and highly efficient.

In November 2019, amendments were made by the Japanese government to the Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices Act (PMDAct) with the aim to enhance patient safety. One amendment called for the transition from paper-based to electronic leaflets (e-leaflets) for pharmaceuticals and medical devices.

The Paediatric Teaching Clinical Hospital wanted to transition from its manual, paper-based processes of ordering and administering medicines into automated ones, supported by GS1 standards. One major goal of the project was to improve patient safety and significantly minimise (or even eliminate) medicationrelated errors.

As COVID-19 vaccines became available, Ireland’s Health Service Executive (HSE) needed an efficient and effective way of receiving, administering, tracking and reporting vaccinations across its more than 40 Centralised Vaccination Clinics (CVCs). It was important for the HSE’s National Immunisation Office (NIO) that no dose was wasted and that batches of vaccine could be tracked to the point of vaccination.

Serum Institute of India needed a to comply with the UNICEF mandate for seamless delivery of vaccine to various parts of the world.

When the COVID-19 virus hit Australia, the Australian Capital Territory’s health system (ACT Health) faced the challenge of containment, testing and administering vaccinations.

With more than 100,000 people in 100 countries, Sanofi is transforming scientific innovation into healthcare solutions around the globe. The global biopharmaceutical company wanted to improve the efficiency of its operational processes related to investigational products that, in turn, would deliver numerous benefits for its healthcare providers and patients.

Laboratory samples, such as cancerous tissues taken during a biopsy, are “precious” since a patient’s care could be delayed if the sample was lost. It would be necessary to take another sample (perhaps by another potentially invasive operation) or the hospital might be unable to retrieve another sample, unnecessarily delaying the diagnosis and treatment for the patient.

As a public purchasing organisation, Resah aims to facilitate access to the ordering, management and identification of products exchanged between hospitals and manufacturers. For global consistency, it is essential to share global information on products directly from manufacturers to hospitals, using a single format.

It was a challenge to validate the endorsement and approval of the Ministry of Health and Social Protection to carry out a pilot test and make use of the Unique Device Identification (UDI) device identifier (DI) to identify medical devices in Colombia, as well as align healthcare providers with the proposal.