Health service urged to use bar coding

THE REPUBLIC needs to move towards a paperless healthcare system to enhance patient safety, a conference on medical technology has been told.

Patient and medicine bar coding has been used to reduce medical errors in medicating patients in other countries. Bar coding is used in surgical instruments to track and trace how they have been used and for artificial hips and pacemakers.

It is estimated globally that 11 per cent of patients are victims of a medical error in hospital ranging from the wrong medicine doses to life-threatening surgical procedures.

The conference, last Thursday, was hosted by GS1, the global not-for-profit organisation which says it seeks to ensure uniform standards for medications and hospital instrumentation worldwide.

GS1 Ireland chief executive Jim Bracken said the Republic was lagging behind in embracing information and communication technology (ICT) for the medical sector. He believes bar coding would not only enhance patient safety but free up medical professionals such as doctors, pharmacists and nurses to spend less time on administration and more on patient care.

"A nurse scanning a bar-coded medicine and a patient's bar code would ensure that the right patient and the right medicine are matched up. The level of medical error is quite alarming," he said. "At present you have a one in 50 chance of being prescribed the wrong medicine in hospital - that is an unacceptable risk. The case we're making is that we should be using these technologies. It's been used for 30 years and has been proven to work for 15 years in other countries. In the United States it is mandatory to have single dose bar coding.

"There is a need now to bring a patient electronic record which would lead to a much safer regime in Irish healthcare. If such a record existed, a doctor would not have to follow a paper trail," he said.

The conference was addressed by a number of experts on medical ICT. The conference heard from Prof Peter Weedle of University College Cork who has been operating robot dispensers at two pharmacies he owns in Mallow. The robots have made only two errors in 100,000 subscriptions since they were introduced last year, he claimed.

According to Frank Kilzer, a world authority on track and trace medical instruments at the Alexius Medical Centre in Bismarck, North Dakota, "By using the technology, we have been able to reduce the medication errors. We are doing a better job of managing the surgical instruments making sure that all the appropriate instruments are on the tray before an operation."