GS1 in touch

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Healthcare reform creates new opportunities

By Chris Adcock on 20 January 2010
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Article co-authored by Chris Adcock and Ulrike Kresya

 

Dear Colleagues,

In light of a variety of concerns about patient safety and about rapidly escalating healthcare costs, governments worldwide are taking action and important policy changes are on the way. Some of them will have a direct impact on the healthcare supply chain. Various authorities worldwide have developed, or are developing, regulations requiring automatic identification, serialisation and traceability systems in healthcare to improve patient safety, including the European Commission, the US Food and Drug Administration, ANVISA (the National Health Surveillance Agency in Brazil), the Turkish Ministry of Health, and the India Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

Global standards can provide a global framework that takes into account all these kinds of specific requirements for medical products.

GS1 in Healthcare – global reach
GS1 has been working with the global healthcare community for 4 years via its voluntary, global healthcare user group: GS1 Healthcare. This group is leading the healthcare sector to the successful development and deployment of global standards by bringing together experts in healthcare to enhance patient safety and supply chain efficiencies.

GS1 Healthcare user groups, both local and global, are recognised as an open and neutral source for regulatory agencies and other stakeholders who are seeking input and direction for global standards in healthcare. The Public Policy Work Group monitors important developments and supports MOs to provide input through official responses, position statements, fact sheets, etc.

There are three major work streams to our standards development roadmap:

  • AIDC Application Standards
  • GDSN
  • Traceability in healthcare

Countless hours of vetting, offline discussions and brainstorming, and more than 10,000 contact hours (conference calls and physical meetings) have now resulted in some important milestones and make the following global standards for the healthcare sector available:

This Special Edition of GS1 in touch provides an overview of the current status and next steps of each of our major work streams, as well as updates about our efforts in public policy, communication and training.

GS1 in Healthcare – local reach
The focus now switches from standards development to standards implementation. Although more development work is on the way, we have today reached a point where MOs will drive adoption in their local healthcare community and support the implementation of these standards in healthcare.

This Special Edition of GS1 in touch includes examples of the activities and accomplishments of local user groups in Australasia, Belgium, France, Spain, Japan, Taiwan, UK, and US.

As of today, 23 MOs have already established a local user group, bringing together all local supply chain stakeholders, and are actively driving adoption and implementation of GS1 Standards in healthcare. Will 2010 be the year that your Member Organisations implements its local user group? A starter kit to help you launch your group is available at GS1 Online.

The time has come to start implementing GS1 standards across the healthcare supply chain. It will be a journey to get there, but the patient safety and efficiency benefits are and will be substantial for everyone.

Join the journey!

 
Chris Adcock
President Industry
GS1 Global Office

Ulrike Kreysa
Director Healthcare
GS1 Global Office

 


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