E-DRUG: Your experience and opinions on the use of barcodes (4)
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In some European countries, barcodes are used to check the identity of
meds in community and hospital pharmacies. In the Netherlands, a
standard has been adopted by industry and wholesalers. The barcode
appears in the national medicines database, and can be used by automated
pharmacies for several purposes. In the Netherlands the main use is
in ensuring the right identity of a drug for which a label has already
been prepared. There is a prescription barcode, and a product barcode.
Computer checks if the scanned product barcode matches with the desired
identity of the drug for the specific prescription. Occasionally a
product does not have a barcode and then, indeed, we create our own.
Almost every pharmacy now has a printer that can print readable
barcodes.
I do not understand why this would not be possible in developing
countries, unless your inventory is not in a computer. And Rollo's
advice seemed too simple, but if you know the number of medicines you
are going to have, you can estimate the necessary length of the code. In
my view it would better to develop a separate code for the expiry dates:
otherwise you would have to create codes for product+exp date every time
you have another batch.
Best regards,
Foppe van Mil