Data quality is imperative for optimal performance: it allows for seamless digital communications among systems, allows UDI data supplied by manufacturers to be used with confidence, and it powers inventory management.
“The importance of data quality is incalculable. Without clean data and a ‘single version of truth’ for all products coming into your system, you are hamstrung in what you can accomplish,” Capatch says. “That is why we benefitted from teaming up with a solution partner that made an investment in managing the item master data using standard identifiers where available, and we did not have to duplicate their efforts, just leverage them.”
“When working with a new client, the first thing we do is data cleansing,” says Vicky Lyle, vice president of Industry Associations at Owens & Minor. “We go into a [customer] department, scan each instance of every single product in that department to make sure the product exists in the global item master. In the instance where a product is not in the database, we utilize the GTIN to source the data from the GUDID [Global Unique Device Identification Database] or directly from the manufacturer’s site.”
Affiliates within the Geisinger system use QSight’s highly enriched item master database. A scan of GS1 barcodes on any given facility’s stockroom shelf will yield a product match of up to 95 percent. Once a product is added in the global item master, it is available for any customer that scans GS1 barcodes.
In the age of Big Data, hospitals are faced with collecting and interacting with massive amounts of data for thousands of products, most of which carry enriched attributes that go beyond manufacturers’ production information. A standards-based inventory management system, provides a secure repository and communications nucleus, bringing value to healthcare facilities like Geisinger needing to leverage the data in several vital ways, including patient safety.
Currently, QSight has over 600,000 stock keeping units (SKUs) in its cloud-enabled database, which is available to all customers, with 74 percent of SKUs tied to a GS1 Global Trade Item Number® (GTIN®). QSight allows for flexibility so that these alternate identifiers can be “tied” to the GS1 GTIN, when necessary, and supports the industry transition from proprietary identifiers to the standards-based UDI. QSight enhances its databases constantly when additional products are scanned by customers. And because it is cloud-based, the collective information is available to all customers as the scanning takes place, consistently recognizing a product via the GTIN encoded as the unique device identifier. That the constant evolution of QSight data is shared among all users benefits everyone.
“That’s where we’re starting to see some gains in using systems that are built on GS1 Standards,” Capatch says. “We can use standards to figure out what items we all have in common.”
The expansiveness of GS1 Standards provides a means of capturing specialized attributes that are crucial in tissue and bone implant procedures. A hip replacement appliance must include the side of the human body into which it is intended for use, for instance; tissue grafts may require information taken from a visual inspection or preparation of the biological material. The need for greater specificity to populate medical practice records as well as individual medical histories is satisfied using standards-based inventory management.