October 02, 2015 Industry news
The benefits of GS1 standards in healthcare highlighted by two leading NHS Trusts
The prestigious EHI 2015 awards were held last night, at the Westminster Park Plaza in London. In the closely fought category of “best use of IT to support healthcare business efficiency” Derby Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust won, with Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust & NHS South of England Procurement Services highly commended by the judging panel.
Derby Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has developed an in-theatre usage and procedure level costing system that uses services from accredited GS1 UK partners Healthlogistics and Assistive Partner, and also hTrak. GS1 barcodes are used to capture staff, consumables and the time used in an operation, leading to significant reductions in the volume of stock held and accurate cost data. The team is now looking to introduce the system across all wards.
South of England Procurement Services, the Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust supply chain team, has undertaken a major project to implement a best-practice inventory management system from Ingenica Solutions, fully utilising GS1 standards. It has been implemented in a 27 theatre complex, 40 supporting locations and other sites, leading to significant cultural changes in their approach to inventory management, and to date, a cost savings ratio of 8.5:1.