Flevo Hospital has implemented the ZetesMedea warehouse execution solution to improve the visibility and traceability of inventory. The care provider took this step in anticipation of new legislation for provision of traceability data to the National Implants Registry (NIR) and the European Medical Device Regulation (MDR). In addition to enhancing the quality of digital registration, ZetesMedea will enable reductions in waste due to better product best-before date management, reduced inventory levels and efficiency savings.
Digital registration
Flevo Hospital initiated digital registration of goods in the autumn of 2017 to meet a logistics need. “We use a SAP system for our procurement and logistics, and we needed digital registration of all received items and used goods”, explains Diandra de Jong, project manager and EMR (Electronic Medical Record) consultant at Flevo Hospital. “That way we can reduce waste from exceeding best-before dates, and over time we can reduce our stock levels by improving inventory visibility.”
Increasing regulations for National Implants Registry
Like other care providers, Flevo Hospital must comply with increasing regulations for supplying traceability data to the NIR. These take effect on 1 January 2019, in advance of the European Medical Device Regulation (MDR) in 2020, so the priority has been shifted to the traceability of implants. “We started with digital registration of all implants in the operating room, using scanners and GS1 barcodes”, adds De Jong. “After that we will use the same solution to register all other implants and goods.”
Time savings and smaller chance of errors
“Digital registration and communication provide time savings and reduce the chance of human errors”, according to De Jong. “Counting items by hand and entering quantities in spreadsheets are outdated practices. We process about 3,500 different implants, and the number of other products is much larger. With the supplied ZetesMedea software, the uniform GS1 barcodes and the associated scanners, Zetes has delivered a complete solution that allows all registration data to be read into our ERP system faster and error-free.” Flevo Hospital uses CT50 PDA’s from Honeywell for this entire process and supports the need for displaying data and workflows as well as also being used for scanning”