Barcode technology in healthcare

Barcode technology in healthcare is the use of optical machine-readable representation of data in a hospital or healthcare setting.

Dating back to the 1970s, there has been a continual effort among healthcare settings to adopt barcode technology. In the early 2000s, published reports began to illustrate high rates of medical error (adverse events) and the increasing costs of healthcare. As a result, the desire for barcoding technology in healthcare has grown as a realistic and applicable solution. Ranked first in 2007 and second in 2008 in the Annual Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Leadership Survey, HIMSS placed high priority on the use of barcoding technology to reduce medical errors and promote patient safety.

Barcoding in healthcare have a variety of applications, including the following:

On February 2004, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had ruled that barcodes must be used on certain human drugs. Barcodes must be linear in nature and must be readable by barcode scanners. Medication barcodes must have specified information for drug identification. Barcode information on these items must include the National Drug Code (NDC) number of the drug, a 11-character identification number for the medication. The NDC contains the name of the medication, dosage and drug company that produces the medication. Additional information that may be included in medication barcodes may include the expiration date and lot number of the medication. This is to ensure that counterfeit or expired drugs are not being administered to patients.

Medication management is a difficult task, where it focuses on the "five rights": right patient, right medication, right dose, right time, and right route of administration. Barcode medication verification at bedside allows for nurses to automatically document the administration of drugs by means of barcode scanning. A study conducted in 2010, found that barcode usage prevented about 90 000 serious medical errors each year and reduced mortality rate by 20%. One case study noted that the use of barcodes reduced medication administration error by 82% across five units studied from pre-implementation to post-implementation. Other benefits that were realized included improved nursing staff satisfaction, improved patient satisfaction, and improved community relations.

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