GS1 UK, has signed a multi-year agreement with NHS Wales to drive the adoption of GS1 standards to identify, capture and share supply chain data.
The decision to do so has been driven by the objectives of the Welsh Government’s Plan for Health and Social Care – A Healthier Wales. The plan centres on harnessing existing resources and investing in new technology, to deliver better outcomes for their patient populations. The programme aims to provide greater control over stock and reduce the volume of system-wide waste.
NHS Wales is now the third devolved nation to adopt these standards, along with England and Northern Ireland.
The Scan for Safety Wales Project Board has been established to manage the rollout and will initially focus on developing a national inventory-management system to improve the traceability of healthcare products throughout the supply chain.
NHS England has already seen some benefit to the adaptation of these standards which were published in, A scan of the benefits: the Scan4Safety evidence report.
The partnership with GS1 will help NHS Wales implement this registry and go even further to track and identify every person, every product, and every place across all NHS Wales organisations.
Glen Hodgson, head of healthcare at GS1 UK, said: “We are delighted to be collaborating with NHS Wales on their Scan for Safety project. By working together, we can support the project board to deliver enhanced patient safety, reduce unwarranted clinical variation, and improve operational efficiencies across their entire healthcare system.
“Furthermore, because GS1 standards are both system and device agnostic, any data captured can be shared effortlessly between systems and organisations. This is the key to improving the patient care journey – enabling access to accurate patient information in real time, irrespective of where that care was received.”
