Computers are good with numbers and can form precise calculations. They remember perfectly and can manage big lists of numbers. What they are not good at is averaging and understanding meaning. So for example, “St Peters Hospital” will be different from “St Peter’s Hospital” if it appears in medical records. And, nowadays since most of our health, wealth and probably happiness (!) is managed by computers they need a precise number to identify with hospital, device or location. Thus here come Global Identification numbers.
A Global identification number has to be used by a Device manufacturer to identify customers, ship to bill locations, as well as trading partner business communication. A universal standard for identifying customers and locations are beneficial for both the customers and the suppliers but impose large requirements in coming up with systems to maintain the records and manage the computer systems for tracking.
Typically, healthcare systems are as diverse as the number of companies, hospitals and entities. Each of them identifies the other by unique names and ID’s. For example, a medical device manufacturer will call their St Peters Hospital Customer by SPH-102, SPH-103 whereas the customer may call the manufacturer by its own identified name – Usinlife LLC for example. Thus, the same hospital from another manufacturer might be called “St-Peters”. Add that to the complication of various locations of the hospital, warehouse, address and building and now it is impossible to track who made the device and where it was delivered without going through enormous amount of paperwork.
To unify the locations and entities, healthcare providers have asked trading partners to use GS1 numbers. These are 13 digits, globally unique number to identify a hospital, warehouse or health system. This requires that the hospital or other entities identify themselves with GS1 and then let all their partners know about their unique number to track.
This is not specific for healthcare and other industries are going in the same direction. Obviously, the advantages are tremendous: Good data on supply-chain, accuracy of processes and good reporting. In today’s business world where the prices are determined by individual agreements between hospitals, device makers and other suppliers these systems should help in making the process efficient. Find out more through the GS1 website at the bottom and see how your company or hospital can participate in the global standard.