The 2012 unSUMMIT will be held on May 2-4, 2012 at the Hyatt Regency Orange County in Anaheim, California. Heck, that’s right in my backyard. Looks like I’ll be attending.
mobihealthnews: “Socket Mobile announced this week the availability of its latest Socket Bluetooth Cordless Hand Scanner (CHS) Series 7, a barcode scanner with medical applications which has been Apple-certified as a “Made for iPad, iPhone, iPod” accessory.
“This is the best performing barcode scanner for developers who are creating applications incorporating barcode scanning for the Apple iOS,” stated Samantha Chu, data collection product manager at Socket Mobile, in a press release. “There are numerous applications that stand to benefit from barcode scanning in a range of vertical markets, and we believe the CHS 7Xi provides the Apple developer community with a level of control and data integrity that didn’t exist previously.”
I’ve mentioned the CHS Series 7 scanners before. They really are neat little devices; small, quick and accurate.
Another scanner worth mentioning in this category is the Koamtac KDC200. I’ve used the KDC200 and it’s a pretty slick scanner as well.
Some items in a pharmacy are simply difficult to bar-code. Perhaps they’re too small, have an awkward shape or their surface won’t accommodate ink or an adhesive. The problem creates some interesting workarounds, and not always for the better.
One solution is to individually package each item and place the drug information and a bar-code on the outside of the packaging material; overwrapping, if you will. I’ve never been a big fan of overwrapping items because it can be time consuming and cumbersome. Today I ran across a machine that I think offers a genuine option for medications that are difficult to bar-code.
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One Nucleus: “The technique will allow faster identification and resolution of any manufacturing quality problems but will also prove invaluable as an anti-counterfeit measure because the specific coding and validation systems are almost impossible to copy.
Currently most components within diagnostic kits, medical devices and other healthcare products and equipment are ‘stamped’ with a lot code at the point of manufacture. However, these codes are of limited use for quality improvement unless products are produced in very small batches. As a result, regulatory bodies across the world are now putting manufacturers under increasing pressure to invest in much more sophisticated traceability systems, while manufacturers are looking for effective ways to prevent the growing problem of counterfeiting of pharmaceuticals and other healthcare products.
The breakthrough approaches being developed by Innomech will enable manufacturers to mark products with a code that is either unique to the item or shared by only a small number of items produced together.
The codemark is an unobtrusive two-dimensional dot matrix identifier that is linked to a look-up database. In effect the matrix code acts as a ‘key’ to access much more detailed information, such as the specific batch codes of raw materials used during production, the time of manufacture, the production line and so on. A version of the database could be accessible online for anyone to verify the item is genuine.
The codes can be printed or laser etched onto products, applied to virtually any substrate and can even be added onto the surface of pharmaceutical capsules or coated tablets. Matrix codes can be as small as 2 mm by 2 mm holding the code for up to 10 billion numbers. The codes can be read by widely available readers or in many cases from a picture taken with even the simplest camera phone, making them ideal in the battle against counterfeit medicines.”
This is an interesting approach to an age old problem. I wonder if this technology could be used to embed drug information directly on the medication as well, an idea that I hijacked from the Nursetopia website where Joni Watson muses that “Both companies and pharmacies could add a QR code/Microsoft Tag to the medication label for patients and/or healthcare professionals to scan and directly access the patient medication information sheet.” Why not put the QR code directly on the medication itself? Why not indeed.
