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Coding for Success in the UK

By Roger Lamb on 20 January 2010
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GS1 UK has been actively involved with its healthcare sector for several years now, and as a result, has a number of success stories and ‘lessons learnt.’

Some background: Coding for Success
In February 2007, the UK Department of Health recommended that the GS1 system should be used for coding in healthcare, both by manufacturers of medicines and devices, and by National Health Service (NHS) organisations. This programme is known as ‘Coding for Success,’ and the UK government is committed to it. In fact, in January 2009, following presentations made at the House of Commons, the UK Department of Health set up a National Oversight Group to review Coding for Success.

GS1 standards were also ratified by the NHS ISB (Information Standards Board). The ISB has issued an advance notification which heralds the introduction of a bar code standard for the auto-identification of patients using the identity band. The notification states that:

“NHS organisations and those organisations delivering NHS commissioned services deploying bar coding systems for patient identifiers on the identity band will need to implement a bar code system that will enable them to print bar codes to GS1 standards on the identity band. This will require the procurement and installation of a software and hardware system at all points in the hospital where a patient wristband is printed e.g. at patient registration, together with the implementation of procedures to manage the system.”

Submission of the Full Standard to ISB is planned for 01 July 2010. If approved, a mandate for full compliance across the NHS will be issues as of 01 July 2011.


Progress across 2009

As of October 2009, we have allocated 250 GS1 prefixes to NHS entities across the United Kingdom.

We have had success stories using GS1 standards for medicines in hospital pharmacies, to enable the hospitals’ customers to facilitate the use of automated dispensing and ordering processes, improve stock control and match patient records to the right medication.

We have also had success stories using GS1 standards for surgical instruments. In March 2009, the Department of Health issued a Technical Memorandum stating that as a policy position, they recommend the use of the GS1 scheme for the identification of individual instruments and related items. The NHS Connecting for Health programme has worked with GS1 UK to ensure that all acute units in England can apply for GS1 membership with the cost covered centrally.

  • Read about how we helped Wythenshawe Hospital deploy GS1 bar codes to uniquely identify, track and trace surgical instrument tray

Lesson learnt
We have learned a variety of lessons over these past years:

  • Focus on patient safety
  • Find the champions: political, government, users, regulators, and your own Board
  • Understand the processes, and create best practice guidelines for use of GS1 standards (for example, support no reallocation of GTINs!)
  • Focus on delivery
  • Deliver value
  • Secure funding
  • Be patient … but at the same time, be persistent!

In the year ahead
What’s next? Increased work on component identification, so that doctors and nurses spend less time hunting for missing medical equipment; and work on smoothly integrating the NHS Supply Chain into our GS1 UK Data Pool so they can fully benefit from product data synchronisation through GDSN.

Watch for updates on the GS1 UK Healthcare website

 


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