eHealthInsider has a very interesting story, just out yesterday, about a plan brewing in the UK that would see pharmacists become more directly involved in dispensing medical treatment for minor ailments. I’m wondering, based on shortages of doctors and the difficulty of getting timely appointments sometimes here in the U.S., if this is a trend we can expect to hit our shores soon?

Perhaps even more interesting is the UK’s idea, being sponsored at the national government level, that GS1 would be the glue that ties pharmacists to patient medical records:

The white paper further states that the government is also recommending that the GS1 system for radio frequency identification and barcoding should be adopted through the healthcare system in England for both products and coding systems used within healthcare settings such as patient identification codes on wristbands… It says the use of auto-identification and data capture (AIDC) technologies in health care has been limited but that there is evidence of improvements to patient safety when coding systems are used to match patients to their care. Benefits include reduction in medication and dispensing errors, reduced risk of wrong-site surgery, accurate tracking and tracing of surgical instruments, equipments and other devices and much better record-keeping.

EHealthinsider’s very interesting story

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