Keeping you informed of GS1 UK healthcare activities 

Thank you to all those who joined us for the healthcare partner webinar on Wednesday 22 November. It was great to see so many of our partners in attendance.

For those who weren’t able to make it, Tamsin Stafford, partner manager, has written up the key findings below. We intend to host more sessions like these in 2024. By making these webinars more of a routine occurrence, we very much hope all our partners will gain valuable insight into on the ground challenges to adopting GS1 standards. 

As GS1 UK partners, we greatly value your input and will use the results of the post-webinar survey to shape our work going forward and we encourage you to continue to get in contact with us about your priorities and how we could help.

Anish Tailor, head of partnerships

Glen Hodgson, head of healthcare

Scan4Safety (S4S) recap: 

• NOR (National Outcome Registry) – To collect data about all outpatient services, for example implants, through barcode scanning. This is a prerequisite for the government’s mandate to NHS England for everything to be tracked via barcode scanning by March 2024.
• Asset management – A national approach to asset management became increasingly important following the pandemic to ensure all assets can be accounted for at all times. NETIS (National Equipment Traceability Information System) is the new programme being implemented accordingly and is already seeing considerable results in terms of successful asset management. 
• Closed-loop medicines – Designed to mitigate and reduce medication errors that cause harm, since one of the biggest risks to patients in hospital and community is incorrect medicine administration. 99 per cent of pharmaceutical medicines are now identified through GS1 standards.
• Live bed state – A key priority for NHS England who are currently looking at a national approach to this. It is critical to enabling smooth patient movements in real time, as it concerns knowing what condition a bed is in, i.e., occupied, empty, awaiting cleaning or ready for a new patient. The ability to do this electronically removes significant manual labour and improves efficiencies.

The above points are connected by the GS1 mantra of tracking every person, product, and place, which is at the heart of S4S. Global Location Numbers (GLNs) especially, have seen a huge uptake in the last 12 months and is expected to continue growing.

Scan4Safety in England

• The Digital Clinical Safety Strategy published in September 2021 highlighted the need for S4S and the importance of accelerating the use of digital technology to track medical devices. In October 2023 an update was published on the progress in digital clinical strategy, highlighting how S4S and GS1 standards are supporting this.
• The Strategic framework for NHS Commercial document will be launched at the HCSA conference in November 2023. It is the first framework to have come out in more than 10 years and will set out objectives for NHS Commercial over the next five years. NHS Commercial is responsible for £35 billion in spend, with more than 80,000 suppliers. It is a crucial document that we expect will focuses on four things:
  • Our people – Likely to discuss the people within NHS Commercial.
  • Digital and transparency – It is understood it will highlight the implementation of a national PIM (Product Information Master) using GS1 standards, as well as promote S4S as a priority for NHS Commercial. It should also talk about how it can improve operational and transactional procurement through P2P (Procure to Pay) automation.
  • How we work – We expect this to talk about a new warehousing and logistics strategy. NHS Supply Chain is currently out for tender which is part of a strategic focus. We hope this section will talk about how this NHS Commercial Strategy is aligned to S4S and that NHS Supply Chain will accelerate the adoption of integrated management systems and point-of-care scanning. Integration is essential to success, as it is not about all trusts having a separate IMS (Inventory Management System), it is about bringing together the integration of all trusts to ensure a national picture.
  • Influence and scale – It is expected to include a new SRM (Supplier Relationship Management and Contract Playbook) which is hugely important given the difficulties and complexities in dealing with the NHS. They may actively reduce barriers to SME suppliers which is critical and use their influence and scale to achieve NHS Net Zero roadmap by 2045.

George Lawton, senior engagement manager

Four-nation approach 

• Four-nation approach to S4S – Significant collaboration taking place between all four nations on the adoption of GS1 standards and S4S. 
• A co-signed letter from the four nations was sent to medical device suppliers to highlight the work of S4S across each country. 
• The purpose of the letter was to highlight the importance of the four-nation approach to S4S and using global standards to improve patient safety through better traceability of medical devices. This links to the Outcomes and Registries Programme, as it records information about medical devices used in patient procedures

Standards adoption and progress in Northern Ireland and Scotland

• EPIC, the electronic patient record, is being rolled out in Northern Ireland. With the implementation of EPIC, GTINs for medical devices and medicines are being scanned. 
• Other use cases being implemented across NI – Trusts are adopting GS1 standards for asset identification and medical records.
• In Scotland, the national rollout of an IMS to all health boards is complete. Scotland are now in the pilot phase with plans across three sites for point-of-care scanning. 
• Other projects include the medical device data hub, allowing them to link information about medical devices to patients. They can then use that information to look at patient outcomes in the future. 
• Another project is the national medical equipment management programme. This is to provide a national system to support asset management across every health board in Scotland.

Juliette New, engagement manager

National Scan for Safety implementation in Wales

• Trusts in Wales are heavily embedding SfS principles and practices.
• Patient safety is at the heart of programme. 
• Data standards and data capture technologies are also being implemented across NHS Wales. 
• Currently looking to automate the link between uniquely identified people, products and places, to aid the prevention of patient harm through real time data at the point of care, as well as the ability to provide instant traceability of implanted medical devices in the event of a recall.
• Key milestones: 
  • All health boards in NHS Wales are now live with IMS across hospital sites showing widespread implementation of SfS programme and in each of those health boards there has been a business lead appointed to support SfS.
  • Health boards are actively supporting a variety of use cases for SfS e.g. IMS and asset management tracking and now looking at closed-loop medicines. GS1 standards are being considered in these use cases, showing their commitment to interoperability across all of Wales. The health boards are also looking at the mapping of GLNs to ensure standardisation. 
  • NHS Wales is keen to implement into all domains e.g. Welsh Ambulance Service, Welsh Blood Service, and cancer centre.

GS1 continues to foster strategic relationships with the Digital Health and Care Wales (DHCW) to drive standards adoption across the healthcare landscape.