Health Service Focus

Ensuring patient safety with AIDC

There is a lot of talk about Auto ID and Data Capture technologies improving process efficiencies within the NHS, but what about patient safety? NHE went along to a HSCIC event in Manchester to find out more and heard from GS1 UK’s Chris Doyle, head of health information standards and information governance at NHS England, Kathy Farndon,
and Judie Finesilver, ebusiness pharmacist in the commercial medicines unit at the Department of Health.

Auto ID and Data Capture (AIDC) technologies not only provide efficient systems for patient document retrieval, but can also help improve patient safety across the NHS in other ways.

This was the message given at the Health & Social Care Information Centre’s (HSCIC) AIDC Benefits Event in Manchester on 12 March. More than 50 participants working in health procurement, ICT, health informatics, clinical information and finance attended.

AIDC technologies use barcodes, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and other machine-readable codes to quickly and accurately identify a person, item or process. The GS1 standard provides the specification and implementation guidance for achieving accurate AIDC using GS1 International code numbering standards.

As far back as 2012, the Department of Health announced new guidelines to drive the adoption of AIDC for patient document retrieval. AIDC has been in use for decades, particularly in the retail sector, and has the potential to “support patient safety, particularly through medicine management activities”.

The government’s new eProcurement strategy, which was about to be published as NHE went to press, will stipulate that every trust must have a GS1 adoption plan by 2015, which will involve using GS1 standards to enable purchasing and logistics efficiencies and improve inventory management.

Adopting AIDC

Speaking to NHE, Chris Doyle, healthcare marketing manager at GS1 UK, the independent supply chain standards organisation, said: “This technology has been used by supermarkets for the last 40 years, but we are adopting it into the healthcare sector to ensure better efficiency and patient safety.”

But the process won’t happen overnight, he said: “It will take five to 10 years to get to any meaningful level with it, but there is legislation driving it now, and the Falsified Medicines Directive and Device Identification measures will mean the majority of pharmaceuticals and devices will have to be fully identified using the GS1 system”.

A major benefit of using AIDC is that it will almost eliminate incorrect medication use, improving patient safety.

The technology is easy to use, Doyle explained: “Everyone can use automated checkouts without training, and it is that type of technology. It is that simple. It is about automating processes, which will free up extra time for healthcare staff to care for patients.

“It’s estimated that one hour out of every eight-hour nursing shift is spent looking for notes – if you can automate that process, that is a 12.5% time saving across the board.”

Case study

Royal Wolverhampton Hospitals NHS Trust is tracking patients, assets and staff using RFID technology, and now holds the record for having over 1,000 days MRSA-free. It had been one of the most MRSA-prone hospitals in the country.

Doyle said: “The trust thinks it is, in part, because of the hand cleaning technology, which they can track and monitor. So they know if a paid member of staff has washed their hands prior to interactions with patients. The main drive for this technology is improving patient safety.”

Automation

The presentation by Judie Finesilver, ebusiness pharmacist in the commercial medicines unit, Department of Health, was called ‘The Patient Journey’. It identified the benefits of using AIDC technology to monitor patients’ progress from the moment they walk into A&E to being discharged.

It is vital to get the right code on the right product, she said, especially medicines, and added that there are many benefits to automation.

“In some cases, automation is nearly available in the NHS, which will lead to the automatic replenishment of medicines, provide automatic entry into the electronic records of patients, allow the automatic control of stocks, and record automatic information both for when a patient enters and leaves a hospital,” she said.

It is hoped automation improve the patient experience while saving clinical staff time on wards, in A&E, in recovery, in pharmacy and finally for GPs after people have left hospital so their records are up to date.

Standards: Back to basics

Finally, Kathy Farndon, head of health information standards and information governance at NHS England, explained how AIDC can improve processes in healthcare.

The value of identification is massive, she said. “An example of this was when the horsemeat scandal broke, and within a matter of hours Tesco, through its barcode data, had narrowed down which stores had been affected. Within 24 hours it had sent out a message to people who had bought the product – by using data from loyalty card holders.

“In healthcare, there are still women out there with silicone implants, which did not have barcodes and were not traceable, and that is really frightening.”

When Farndon worked in New Zealand she helped implement an emedication programme. “This meant we could trace medications right from the manufacturer to the patient’s bedside,” she said, “and it meant we could also do medicine reconciliation after treatments, which really improved the patient experience and safety.”

More from the AIDC event and on the eProcurement strategy in the May/June edition of NHE.