Barcode celebrates its fortieth birthday
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- Published: Sunday, 06 October 2019 11:38
- Written by News Editor
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The first UK barcode scan took place on October 2, 1979, at Keymarkets in Spalding, Lincolnshire. On the 40th anniversary of the barcode in the UK, it is scanned more than 70,000 times around the world every second. Today the barcode is used across healthcare, including hospitals, saving the NHS billions.
The barcode has revolutionised the NHS, saving thousands of lives and a projected £7bn over seven years. Barcodes uniquely identify every person, product and place – helping to enhance patient safety, reduce unwarranted clinical variation and improve operational efficiencies.
Barcodes are used to help manage health records and identify medications, determining whether products are safe to use and still in date. This makes processes much more efficient and frees up precious time for doctors and nurses. Theatre procedures are now scanned to record important data and reduce human error, and every baby born in an English hospital can be identified through the application of an NHS number using GS1 standards.
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