In healthcare sector, the entities involved are diverse, including manufacturers, distributors, healthcare services providers, healthcare institutions (clinics/ hospitals/medical centres), drug stores and other outlets through which healthcare products are finally consumed. Particularly in healthcare institutions, Supply Chain Management can help manage patient care and administrative processes such as patient identification, routing and treatment, drug administration and inventory, laboratory examination, identification of departments and medical procedures.

In order to have consistent communication among all parties concerned in supply chain process, whether for communication with external trading partners or internal administrative process and to ensure high quality patient care for healthcare sector, a set of globally recognised and multi-industry adopted standards is essential as facilitating tools for efficient management of healthcare supply chain.

The EAN.UCC system offers a set of standards for data identification, data capture, and data communication. It acts as a common language for supply chain players to efficiently communicate essential business information and streamline supply chain process thereby facilitating high quality patient care.

Applications of EAN.UCC barcoding system

Forty-four countries in the world including USA, Japan and European Union countries have adopted the EAN.UCC system for identifying, tracking & tracing medical products. Some of the major applications & benefits for the healthcare industry sector are:
" Fast and accurate information dissemination on shipments of drugs, etc. across the supply chain.
" First - in- First - out (FIFO) to minimize product obsolescence.
" Improved control over stock, warehousing and distribution of drugs, etc.
" Shortening of re-order cycles from stockist / distributors.
" Effective tracking of consumption pattern for drugs / formulations geographically.
" Just - in -time inventory control.
" Automated order collections and processing by medical representatives.
" Elimination of manual errors in maintaining databases.
" Automated invoicing and lower interest carrying costs.
" Streamlined business processes, efficiency in supply chain.
" Higher productivity of employees.
" Accurate and timely forecasting of raw material ordering levels.
" Overall cost savings in inventory, supply chain, manufacturing, etc.
" Automated updation of excise registers in warehouse data capture.

Some of the benefits which forward-looking hospitals worldwide have gained from implementing EAN.UCC standards are:
" Reduction of Inventory levels of up to 15%
" Reduction in storage space requirements
" Higher quality patient care
" Total traceability of drugs & other medical supplies.
" 40% reduction in keying-in mistakes & consequently complete inventory control
" Reliable, secure and high quality processes.
" Close to 100% service levels with optimal inventory controls.
" Zero ordering, receiving & distribution errors
" Zero obsolescence of drugs
" Improved stock turnover rates - 20 times at the hospital pharmacy
" More time for nurses to take care of patients.
" Accurate distribution of supplies.
" Minimal errors in the reception and dispatch of products.
" Optimization in administrative tasks - data entry, minimization of paper flow, etc.

Summary Benefits for suppliers - Healthcare product manufacturers will be able to accurately identify items down to the unit dose level. Their products so marked will add value for their customers and maintain a low medical error rate in healthcare. Distributors will have more encoded information on products allowing them to improve their inventory control processes.

Examples - Some of the international healthcare products suppliers, which are benefiting from the EAN.UCC standards in barcoding and EDI are Herba Apotheker AG of Austria, Abbott Labs of the USA, B. Braun Melsungen AG of Germany, Terumo of Japan, Tiger Medicals of Singapore, Startec Medical of UK, etc.

Thus, EAN·UCC applications in the healthcare industry are numerous and cover whole value chains from the "final" customers, i.e. the hospitals, independent laboratories, pharmacy/retail outlets and the patient, to suppliers, wholesalers and distributors.

Barcoding using International Numbering standards

Barcoding is one of the IT tools used for automatic data capture. As opposed to manual data entry, which is tedious and prone to inaccuracies and errors, barcoding enables data capture with 100% accuracy and in micro-seconds. Barcodes are represented through a series of black bars & white spaces and printed as either part of product/consignment packaging (source marking) or as barcoded labels (stickers) which are generally pasted or as tags (attached to items/consignments).

Barcodes can be used to represent information related to product attributes; other supplementary information like batch number, manufacturing/expiry dates, consigner/consignee etc.

When International Numbering standards are used, as symbology, it enables universal & unique identification of companies and their products/consignments.

Barcodes are extensively used worldwide, for over past 25 years across different industry sectors and trade, for a wide number of applications. Some popular applications of barcoding are in manufacturing (for inventory management of finished goods/raw materials, work-in-progress, product track & trace, etc.), in retail (at point-of-sale, stock management, demand forcasting, automated stock ordering, track & trace of products, etc.), in distribution (for ware-housing, cross-docking operations, etc.), in transport (for consignment track & trace, pad consolidation & container stuffing, ensuring correct dispatches and correlation between transport documents and consignments, asset tracking, facilitating trans-shipments, facilitating loading/unloading operations, etc.).

Some horizontal applications of barcoding are in facilitating generation of automatised packing lists, delivery challans, invoices; facilitating generation of MIS reports through data capture of digitized information contained within barcodes and its integration with in-house software applications (ERP's etc.); integration with EDI (Electronic Data Interchange); streamlining of supply chain business process; enabling efficient and fast product recalls where required; etc.

For the above wide ranging applications, industry worldwide has been using barcoding extensively for past 25 years. Some proactive government departments in India have also started use of barcoding following international standards like the Canteen stores Department (Ministry of Defence), Delhi State Excise Deptt. etc.

The author is CEO, EAN India