April 13, 2016 Industry news
The second day of our conference opened with our headline speaker, Lord David Prior, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for NHS Productivity.
His speech highlighted the potential for transformation that the GS1 programme offers to Acute Trusts. As both Lord Prior and Professor Terence Stephenson, our second speaker, pointed out, in many industries the accuracy provided by barcodes is taken for granted but for the future of the NHS, getting really deep and accurate costing through barcodes will be a hugely important. It’s important because, by most world standards, the NHS is right at the top but it has to do that with very little money. In Lord Prior’s words, “the NHS is an efficient system that can do better”. This system will be improved through the GS1 programme by exposing unwarranted variation and that is how we’ll get the much needed clinical engagement that has been emphasised as critical across both days of our conference. If we get clinicians on board, we can ensure long term, sustainable improvement.
The benefits of GS1 implementation have been shown by all our speakers today, including a General Medical Council, Chief Nurse, Chief Pharmacist and business development perspective. Standardisation means more time for patients, better understanding of costs, better comparison of clinical performance and exposing variations in clinical practice. It’s not just about finance or procurement – it impacts the whole hospital. It’s the meaningful use of the data the standards collects, as Mark Sheehan, Business Development Manager at Galway & Limerick Clinic pointed out. And as the data saves the NHS money, it also saves lives.
A big thank you to all our fantastic speakers, our sponsors, exhibitors and, of course, our delegates, for making this our best healthcare event yet. Let’s build on all the excellent uses of GS1 that have been presented and work together to make the NHS a safer and even more efficient organisation.