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GS1 Belgilux launching GS1 DataMatrix pilot

By Nicolas Stuyckens on 20 January 2010
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The Belgian healthcare sector in general and its hospitals in particular are increasingly aware of the challenging context surrounding medical and pharmaceutical product identification at different levels (unit, case, crate…).

Current identification and labeling practices in Belgium do not allow hospitals to properly trace medical products, primarily due to lack of standardised methods and systems. This creates potential confusion and errors in situations where products are re-labelled at hospital pharmacies. Additionally, the Belgian healthcare sector (like so many others) is faced with national regulation requirements all while operating internationally, another potential environment for errors and counterfeit.

A GS1 Belgium & Luxemburg pilot project has been launched to face these challenges.

Its main objective is to improve processes in hospitals and across the sector’s entire supply chain in order to better ensure patient safety.

The pilot participants will work to:

  • Define hospital processes
  • Define what data must be encoded into GS1 DataMatrix for each level of packaging, up to the unit of use
  • Identify the benefits for hospitals and their trading partners
  • Study the impact of adapting existing systems to allow them to exploit GS1 DataMatrix
  • Test applications
  • Prepare case studies and guidelines for deployment

Participating suppliers have selected the products that will be part of the pilot project and will now start marking these products at the unit of use with a GS1 DataMatrix including the GTIN; other packaging levels and other data will be part of a next phase of the pilot project.

Participants include

  • Pharmaceutical companies: Baxter - Johnson & Johnson - Pfizer
  • Hospitals: AZ St Jan Brugge - AZ Maria Middelares (Gent) - AZ Sint Maarten (Mechelen) - UZ Leuven - ZOL Oost Limburg - CHC Liège - Hôpital militaire
  • Solution providers: Advanco - Codivex - IPEX - Mundi Technology - Wenglor
  • Fournisseur logistique : DHL Exel
  • Associations: Association francophone des pharmaciens hospitaliers, Pharma.be, Vlaamse Vereniging van Ziekenhuisapothekers

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