Creating clarity at the point of care

To tackle this demand, healthcare expenditures in Asia-Pacific will grow at a compound annual rate of 12.8 per cent, almost doubling in six years. 

The Economist estimates that healthcare spending in Asia has risen from 14 per cent of the global total in 2006 to 23 per cent in 2012. 

In the rapidly growing Asia-Pacific healthcare market, reputation is key as consumers exercise their choice in where to go or make their voice heard. 

Healthcare organisations are continuing to turn to technology to improve the quality of care for patients.

Private and public hospitals will invest extensively in installing, maintaining and upgrading IT capabilities to increase operating efficiency, clinical outcomes and profitability.

When considering technology deployment in the healthcare space, service providers should look into solutions that seamlessly integrate into existing healthcare systems and give a virtual voice to patients, clinicians and assets to improve visibility into patient information and status. 

Many healthcare providers, particularly public hospitals and clinics, often handle large amounts of patient cases every day. It is specifically in situations like this where solutions like patient wristbands can help. 

In busy emergency rooms or even for scheduled surgeries, patients should be provided with barcoded, antimicrobial-coated, long-lasting wristbands so that they can be accurately identified throughout their hospital stay. 

During disaster recovery situations, a hospital or onsite temporary facility can quickly and also accurately identify, track and secure personnel, victims and assets by providing patients with wristbands, allowing for quick reunification with loved ones.  

Wristband print solutions have evolved rapidly and have become the most effective way to enable immediate and accurate access to critical patient information at the bedside and across various departments. 

According to the College of American Pathologists, specimen labelling errors account for more than 55.5 percent of identification errors every year. 

To dramatically reduce errors, many hospitals have chosen to bring barcoding to the point of care. 

Providing barcoded identification to caregivers, specimen takers, medication providers and even nutrition providers not only prevents identification errors, it also enables a valid and easily traceable electronic trail in the event of issues arising. 

Later in the laboratory, those barcodes can be scanned to record transfers and create accurate test result entries. 

In hospital pharmacies, barcode solutions allow hospitals to add variable data to every drug at the unit-dose level. These barcode labels are scanned immediately to verify and record medication dispensing, as well as to check patient identification against the prescription order to ensure the correct medication in the correct dosage is administered to the correct patient. 

With rising demand and growing patient volume outpacing the increase in healthcare resources, healthcare administrators should consider the use of technology across the facility to ensure the creation of efficiencies and clarity, which, in turn, enable their staff to provide proper care.

 

Ryan Goh is vice president of sales at Zebra Technologies Asia-Pacific.