Medication Barcoding Systems: Improving Patient Safety & Accuracy

Medication transcription and administration errors are common throughout many hospitals. It hampers patient care. For this reason, many hospitals deploy a bar-code based electronic medication-administration system (eMAR) to help validate and administer patient medication.

Identification

• The eMAR system is an integrated software system that combines bluetooth wireless technology with a hand-held bar code scanner. The system works similar to the bar-code scanner system in retail outlets and groceries stories. However, instead of products, patient medication doses are bar-coded and tracked as the medication travels back and forth between the pharmacy, nurses, physicians and patients.

Technology

• A bar code is a code affixed to an item; each bar code represents a unique combination of bars and spaces which, when read by the bar-code scanner, corresponds to information stored in a database. In eMAR, the bar code is affixed to patients' wrist bands and the database contains medication details such as doses, prescription history and other information relevant to patient care.

Significance

• Hospital functionality is one place where errors cannot be tolerated. For this reason, hospitals need to deploy solutions such as eMAR and other information technology solutions to improve patient care.