Using data matrix barcodes in health care to improve safety intravenous mixtures
Drugs used in preparing intravenous (IV) bags currently use linear barcodes to store the National Drug Center number but, amazing as it seems, a clinician may need to type that number into a keyboard in order to determine the dosage, expiry date etc. Fresenius Kabi have recently announced that they will start putting GS1-Data matrix codes on their pharmaceutical products. The additional data on the codes can even let a clinician know if the drug has been recalled. In surveys around 20% of IV bag preparations contain errors so streamlining the process using 2-D codes should help the process.
