Patient ID scanners help with compliance with with the five patient rights in regards to drugs – the correct time, route, dose, medicine, and patient. Off the shelf technology has usability problems therefore using a unified system works best in this situation. Only 10% of hospitals use some form of patient identification. The Parkview medical center and the New York Presperterian Center uses Intellidot CAREt system. Safety and satisfaction increased at Parkview and errors dropped from 20% to 8%. MDI hosipital used a bar code scanner but it did not work well on round wrists or medicine bottles. They were contacted by Hand Held Products that uses uses 2D barcodes that resemble small dots. The code is repeated so a good scan will be completed. The Intellidot CAREt system uses a similar technology. St. Luke’s Hospital implemented electronic medication administration and reporting system (eMAR) to improve services. The Wythenshawe hospital uses the Datalogic Gryphon hand held scanner. However there are still problems with hand held scanners if the wristband is wrong.
