ISQua and GS1 join forces to improve the quality of care in hospitals around the world

ISQua, The International Society for Quality in Health Care, and GS1 have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to promote and enhance quality of care and patient safety on a global scale. 

The collaboration between ISQua and GS1 will support and encourage the link between hospital accreditation and implementation of harmonised standards for automatic identification of patients, caregivers and products in hospitals.

Miguel Lopera, GS1 CEO and President stated, “Engaging in this collaboration is testament to the growing role GS1 standards play in ensuring and maintaining quality within hospitals, by helping to safeguard against errors and create process efficiencies, enabling hospital staff to focus on patient care.”

Providing high quality care is vital for hospitals but can be challenging when facing complex demands through growing workload, new regulations, changing demographics and pathologies and rising costs. This is why hospital accreditors around the world increasingly rely on the use of the ISQua accreditation standards, and the power of the GS1 standards to improve patient safety and address possible process inefficiencies.

Catherine Koetz, Industry Manager – Healthcare at GS1 Australia said, “GS1 standards provide a framework to support improved patient safety and supply chain efficiencies within our hospitals’.

ISQua CEO, Peter Carter said, ‘‘A global approach to quality improvement in healthcare is essential in the interests of patients and their families and  a partnership between ISQua and GS1 will bring us closer to achieving this vitally important goal.’’

The vast majority of medicinal products, medical devices and medical consumables used in hospitals and other healthcare facilities, today carry GS1 barcodes enabling safer product administration, ordering, replenishment, recall and traceability.  In addition, regulatory agencies and jurisdictions in more than 65 countries acknowledge GS1 standards for medicine and medical device identification.  GS1 standards are also the key to patient and caregiver identification, and recognised by ISO and CEN standards (CEN/ISO TS 18530).

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For more information about GS1 in Healthcare in Australia, visit www.gs1au.org/healthcare/

Catherine Koetz                                          

Industry Manager - Healthcare                                

catherine.koetz@gs1au.org                           

About GS1 Healthcare - GS1 Healthcare is a global, voluntary user community bringing together all Healthcare supply chain stakeholders, including manufacturers, distributors, Healthcare providers, solution providers, regulatory bodies and industry associations. The mission of GS1 Healthcare is to lead the Healthcare sector to the successful development and implementation of global standards by bringing together experts in Healthcare to enhance patient safety and supply chain efficiencies. GS1 Healthcare members include over 80 leading Healthcare organisations worldwide. For more information about GS1 Healthcare, please visit www.gs1.org/healthcare

About ISQua - the International Society for Quality in Health Care, is a non-profit, independent organisation with members in over 70 countries. Its mission is to drive continuous improvement in the quality and safety of health care worldwide through education, research, collaboration, skills enhancement and the dissemination of evidence-based knowledge. For more information about ISQua please visit www.isqua.org

About GS1 Australia – GS1 Australia is the leading provider of standards and solutions for over 20 industry sectors. We introduced barcoding to Australia in 1979 and today we enable more than 17,000 member companies, of all sizes, to become more efficient by implementing the GS1 system.

We bring businesses, associations and industries together. This blended community comes to GS1 Australia for advice, networking and solutions to their supply chain challenges.  For more information visit http://www.gs1au.org/