Patient Bar Codes in the UK: Good or Bad? Useful or Scary? It may seem like a scene straight out of sci-fi movie, but yes, all patients in the United Kingdom will be processed with barcodes by 2013.
The National Health Service announced this week that patients in all four publicly funded health care systems across the U.K. will be given barcoded wristbands. Like product barcodes, these will be read by handheld scanners.
The nationwide barcoding system is meant to cut down the risk of patients being mistaken for someone else or of being given the wrong medication—mix-ups that are common in clinics and hospitals throughout the world.
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