BRUSSELS, BELGIUM and REDLANDS, CA, USA, 15 September 2010 – GS1 and ICCBBA have announced today that they have published the Implementation Guide for bar coding of plasma derivatives.

“To ensure a safe and efficient delivery control process for plasma derivatives, we need to be able to ensure traceability ‘from vein to vein’ effectively,” said Feargal Mc Groarty, Project Manager, National Centre for Hereditary Coagulation Disorders, St James Hospital, Ireland, and co-chair of the GS1 Global Standards Management Process (GSMP) working group for plasma derivatives, “Today, this is difficult to achieve: plasma derivatives, and recombinant products, are sometimes not bar coded, and if they are, the bar codes are not uniform. This means that users need to manually input information in their systems or that they have to re-label the package with a bar code. Both options are not only inefficient, they also result in an additional source of errors and may impact patient safety.”

“Global standards allow the uniform bar coding of plasma derivatives and the unambiguous identification across the supply chain,” said Philippe Majois, Packaging Technology Development Manager, Baxter Healthcare Corp., and co-chair of the GSMP working group, “This new guideline provides guidance to all stakeholders on how to implement this at the various packaging levels of plasma derivatives, and also clearly defines where to use GS1 Standards (plasma derivatives) and the ISBT 128 Standard (blood and blood components).”

“This guideline is important for hospitals and blood banks to ensure future-proof investments in the necessary hardware and software,” added McGroarty, “IT systems that support the GS1 Standards and the ISBT 128 Standard will allow users to unambiguously identify plasma derivatives and blood (components).”
“Together ICCBBA and GS1 have worked closely with the user community to develop this guideline”, added Paul Ashford, Executive Director, ICCBBA, “Our standards organisations started collaborating in 2007 to ensure that our standards are compatible - this guideline is an important milestone for the sector-wide implementation of automatic identification technologies to ensure safe and efficient supply to the Point-of-Care.”

“We started our work in June last year, and over 40 stakeholders from the user communities of ICCBBA and GS1 have contributed to the development of this guideline”, said Chris Adcock, President Industry Engagement, GS1 Global Office, “This is a remarkable achievement and we thank all working group members for their time and dedication. The sector now has clear guidance on how to consistently manage product identification of plasma derivatives.”

Bar Coding Plasma Derivatives Implementation Guide: click here to download.

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ICCBBA_GS1_Press_Release_Sept2010