Most people are familiar with barcodes, but did you know this technology is vital in healthcare?
Hospitals and pharmacies are making use of barcode tracking to help better manage medicines, devices, and equipment, ensuring staff have ready access to critical supplies and assets when they need them.
Barcodes give you a clear view of expiry dates, what’s in stock, and when extra supplies need to be ordered or cut back.
Here are some of the benefits of barcode tracking for medical inventory:
Automate manual processes
Avoid time-consuming paperwork with a medical inventory system, which gives you complete visibility of all your medical supplies – you can control what’s taken out and by who, and get a clear view of stock levels at any time.
This allows staff more time to focus on patient care by automating manual processes.
Our MICS Medicines Inventory Control System manages medication using barcode tracking software to give you comprehensive records of exactly what has been checked out, when and by whom, enabling a full audit trail.
Greater visibility of assets
Hospitals manage a dizzying number of assets, from hospital gowns to pharmaceuticals, wheelchairs and heart monitors. Unfortunately, many do not have full visibility of their inventory, causing them to buy more products or lose track of them.
Using barcode technology, hospitals can automate inventory and asset management. Clinicians, nurses or operations teams can quickly sweep supply rooms using handheld mobile computers to easily identify assets or conduct real-time inventory counts.
When it comes to medicine, this complete visibility reduces error of prescribing the wrong thing or misplacing it.
Enhance patient care
When hospital staff are not tracking down missing inventory or lost or mislabelled medication, they can spend more time on patient care.
Accurately track medical inventory with a barcode system while keeping tabs on critical information such as supply stock levels, medication expiration dates and equipment maintenance details.
This ensures staff don’t accidently issue expired medication or run out of stock which could be of serious harm to patients. This also avoids expensive legal claims.
Secure and compliant stock management
Whether it’s in a care home, hospital or GP surgery, staff members need to properly store away medications, apparatus, or equipment so that there is little chance of theft or things being misplaced.
A medicine stock management system improves the safety and security of handling these assets.
Ensure compliance with regulations
It’s important to remember that the medical field is a highly regulated industry. Because many healthcare professionals have access to controlled substances, it is required by law for care providers, medical clinics, hospitals, and pharmacies to report any medicines that have been lost or misplaced.
Without an accurate, up-to-date stock management system, you could be vulnerable to issues due to theft, and face legal liabilities.
MICS outperforms any other system in this sense, with alerts and warnings that automatically prompt staff to comply with the highest standard of medication administration procedures.
Zebra hardware
Zebra speciality printers, barcode scanners and mobile computers combine to create a hospital tracking system that simplifies operations and gives better visibility of stock.
The TC52x-HC mobile computer and DS2200-HC handheld scanner go hand in hand with our MICS system to enhance inventory control and patient safety.
For more information about Zebra hardware or our medicine stock management system, please contact our team at enquiries@expd.co.uk.
