Auto-ID/Universal Product Number System
Standards designed with healthcare in mind.
In 1983 HIBCC was provided its initial mandate for the health care industry:
Develop a uniform bar code labeling standard for products shipped to hospitals. This relatively straight-forward concept represented a dramatic potential for the entire industry. By agreeing to place a consistent pattern of computer-readable bar codes on their products, manufacturers would provide a control mechanism that would yield enormous benefits to both their hospital customers and distributors.
The mandate to develop the standard grew out of a task force hosted by the American Hospital Association and composed of numerous other health care trade organizations, including those which ultimately founded HIBCC. Bar code technology had already proven a valuable tool for reducing labor costs and human error in other industries, such as retailing. In health care, the potential was even greater because of the impact errors can have on the quality of patient care.
The task force ultimately created the Health Industry Bar Code (HIBC) Standard, composed of two parts: Part One, the HIBC Supplier Labeling Standard, covering the formats used by suppliers of products and Part Two, the HIBC Provider Standard, covering the formats used for internal labeling by health care providers themselves.
The following year HIBCC was formed to administer the standard and issue the Labeler Identification Codes (LIC's) which identify individual manufacturers and are included within each bar code. The LIC database now additionally provides the identifiers which are key elements in EDI transaction message formats and the HIBCC UPN® (Universal Product Number) Repository.
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