New Standard to Aid ID Processes

April 23, 2008

The American National Standards Institute has approved the first part of new data standards to assist in positively identifying patients, drugs, devices and other processes in care delivery using bar code, radio frequency identification and two-dimensional symbol technologies.

The Positive Identification for Patient Safety, Part I, Medication Delivery Standard defines the processes and technologies involved in safe medication administration and management. The Health Industry Business Communications Council, Phoenix, and Partners HealthCare System, Boston, jointly developed the standard.

“The scope of this standard is to define the data formats for the data carriers (bar codes, 2-D symbols or RFID tags) which are used to automatically capture information to positively identify objects in the process around medication administration and management,” according to a 239-page document that describes the standard. “The objects include employee badges, patient wristbands, non-IV medications, IV-medications and smart infusion pumps, and device license plate labeling for intelligent devices.”

The standard will help simplify identification processes, according to the document. “Although it would be possible to simply associate a unique serial number with each employee, patient and medication, and then use a computer network to look up the information associated with each in back-end databases during medication administration, not all hospital entities have the necessary infrastructure in place (or plans to implement it) to allow this approach. This standard therefore accommodates a data set rich enough to implement a medication administration record system even in the absence of such connectivity.”

The standard includes a dictionary of mandatory and optional data elements for each area of use and descriptions of how the data is to be organized. Specifications also outline additional considerations for the areas of use. For instance, information contained in both drug specifications (IV and non-IV) could be used by inventory and electronic medication record systems. Further, “the addition of bar coded information to an employee ID badge doesn’t assume that existing ID systems will be replaced; a bar code can simply be added to existing ID badges,” according to the document. For a copy of the document, click here.

Data Security Archive
Medication Management Archive
Policies/Regulation Archive
Hospitals Archive

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