New GS1 Standard Helps Stop Medication Errors

GS1 Healthcare work group has developed a new GS1 standard which will provide guidance on how to identify healthcare products at the single unit level.

Medication errors are one of the most common causes of preventable adverse events in the healthcare system. Identification of a medicine, up to the moment of administration, is therefore a key element of a safe medicine dispensing procedure in hospitals.  Preliminary studies have suggested the use of barcodes on medicines to the single unit level can help to reduce medication error rates by 41.4%
Point-of-care verification systems and traceability systems rely on the effective capture of data of healthcare products at all packaging levels, whenever dispensed, administered, distributed or used. But until today, hospitals were confronted with the lack of globally harmonised standards on how to identify products at lower levels of packaging such as a single-packed catheter or the individual blister cell from a multi-cell blister card.
A GS1 Healthcare work group, has updated the GS1 Standards to provide clear and consistent guidance on how to identify medication at the single unit level, also known as 'level below the each'.
Frédérique Fremont co-chair of the Level Below The Each Work Group said, “It is essential that healthcare providers work with manufacturers to implement Level Below the Each marking, as this will enable us to reach the critical mass adoption of standardised and automated processes that will reduce medication errors and ensure safe use of medical devices”.
Updates have been made to the GS1 Healthcare GTIN Allocation Rules[2] that incorporate guidance on how a ‘responsible entity’ in the Healthcare supply chain should identify that ‘Level Below The Each’ trade item, including, as examples; single unpackaged pills, pills packaged in blister cells, unpackaged liquids, single-use non-sterile devices such as screws and pins, or multi-use non-sterile devices such as a blood pressure cuff.
Recognising the impact on patient safety of this accomplishment, Peter Tomicki, Zimmer and co-chair of the Level Below The Each Work Group, stated, “This new standard will provide clear and consistent guidance on how and who identifies items at these levels.”