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GS1 Healthcare completes major milestone

By Chuck Biss on 20 January 2010
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New AIDC application standard enables global harmonisation

This new standard provides industry stakeholders with a common set of data and data carriers for medical products at every packaging level, including specific guidance on selection and use of product identification keys, additional product and production data [for example; lot number, expiration date, and/or serial number (where applicable)], and data carriers.

Sector-wide implementation of AIDC systems will improve patient safety, including reducing medication errors, fighting counterfeiting and enabling effective product recalls and adverse event reporting. It will also help remove inefficiencies throughout the healthcare supply chain.

More than 100 experts contributed to the development of this standard over the last three years. In over 150 meetings, or more than 4,500 contact hours, the user group has carefully compiled and validated a set of business requirements, including allocation rules, serialisation, packaging size constraints, direct part marking and have mapped those in product marking grids.

The Phase 1 Standard covers 90% of medical products.

The Application Standard for Small Medical / Surgical Instruments specifically covers AIDC marking of surgical instruments to enable traceability throughout the instrument reprocessing cycle, and in particular to and from the sterilisation department.

 

What’s next?

With GS1 standards now in place for over 90% of all medical products, the time has come to drive implementation and support global harmonisation. Having a local user group can help to achieve this. A starter kit is available to support the launch of your local user group!

This ratification of the AIDC Application Standards is an important milestone – but much more remains to be done. We need GS1 Member Organisations to continue to get engaged directly, and to engage their local stakeholders, in one or more of the GSMP Working Groups devoted to healthcare topics.

Other active work groups include…

  • The Healthcare GLN Work Group, which is working to help the healthcare sector identify physical locations, legal and departmental entities, to support current and future business practices.
  • The Multiple BarCodes Work Group, which was formed to assess the impact of the move toward multiple bar codes on one end-user package to make it easy for humans and machines to use bar code technology in supply chain and mobile commerce applications.
  • The Patient and Caregiver ID Work Group – which should be working on standards for identification and marking/labeling for both patients and caregivers – but was put on hold for lack of user participation! Read more.
  • The Blood Derivatives Work Group seeks to create standards that will clarify the delimitations between blood and blood derivatives. In some countries or hospitals, blood derivatives are managed by the hospital pharmacy; in others, they are managed by blood banks.

Read about how to participate in any of our healthcare working groups or contact Ulrike Kreysa


 


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