GS1 Ireland at the Inaugural National Immunisation Administrators Conference 2019

The GS1 Ireland Healthcare Team recently exhibited and presented at the Inaugural National Immunisation Administrators Conference on 04 July 2019. The event was well attended with a crowd of 100 people between HSE Immunisation administrators, speakers and suppliers. Feedback from attendees included: 

"Barcode scanning was very interesting to see" 

"It’s all going paperless"

The main theme was efficiency, effectiveness and value in immunisation information. One of the remits for the exhibitors at the conference was to encourage a light-hearted atmosphere and “have fun” in maturing attendees understanding of how to encourage immunisation workflow improvement. This request was followed with great merriment by all exhibitors who staged data entry speed tests, a spot the difference quiz and more!

We at GS1 Ireland also embraced the chance to have some “fun” with barcodes by asking attendees to scan a barcode on our patient (aka our toy doll called Benjimina Button) and our demonstrator vaccine boxes.

Scanning product to patient: from 2 minutes to 5 seconds!

Visitors to the stand were then tasked with estimating the time difference between the manual recording of patient and product data vs scanning patient (Patient ID, Name, DOB) and product details (including GTIN, Batch Number, Serial Number, Expiry).

Example Handwritten Record*

Patient ID and Product ID in GS1 Datamatrix Barcode*

*(All data is for demonstration purposes only)

A GS1 developed “scanning app”, a similar platform used by Temple Street Special Feeds Unit, captured the  data automatically through a “simple scan”. This simple demonstration proved very powerful, with attendees being able to visualise the time difference between handwriting/typing in information vs being able to automatically scan all data from the barcodes (seen below)

This data is stored in a database in the application, and also demonstrated how the data can go on to be used for rapid product recall with the functionality to locate recalled batch and identify patients who received this.

Cases have shown the introduction of scanning to patient/electronic traceability have reduced time to product recall from over 19 days using paper, to 1 hour 45 minutes electronically. (Source GS1 UK Healthcare Conference 2019)

The Barcode Beep- what it can do for you now and in the future

Amanda Creane, Healthcare Project Management Executive, GS1 Ireland presented “The Barcode Beep- what it can do for you now and in the future”. This covered the opportunities for improved traceability and more efficient inventory management presented by the GS1 2D datamatrix as a result of The Falsified Medicines Directive. Amanda also covered GS1 Standards in Action in Healthcare by giving a synopsis of how Children’s Health Ireland at Temple Street went from paper based to electronic traceability using GS1 Standards.  Download slides here

Key Messages

One of the key messages from the conference was the importance of data. Chantal Migone of the National Immunisation Office set the scene for the day with the quote:

“Working without data is like driving your car in the dark without lights”

Other presenters included HSE ICT, HIQA and HPSC data experts. Insights included:

• The Importance of having access to accurate, relevant and timely data in order to improve care and inform decision making, from Marie McCarthy of HIQA
• An update on the implementation of Indivdual Health Identifiers (which include a GS1 Prefix) from Marie Lalor, Access to Information (HSE). Marie emphasized the importance of having a common standard which allows systems to talk to each other in order to achieve interoperability

A huge thankyou to Kerry Ryder, General Manager of the National Immunisation for including us in what was a very successful innaugral Immunisation Administrators Conference

Get in touch

If you would like further information on the implementation of GS1 Standards in healthcare, or for a demonstration, please contact: Siobhain Duggan, Director of Innovation and Healthcare