The Promise of a Few Short Black Lines in Saving Lives

Guess what’s celebrating its 35th anniversary?

Let me give you a hint: It’s black and white and read all over. Nope, not a newspaper. Or a sunburned penguin or zebra. It’s bar-code technology.

The first bar code ever scanned was on a pack of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit chewing gum at 8:06 a.m. on June 26, 1974, at a supermarket in Troy, Ohio. There's a fun fact to open a conversation with at the next summer shindig right?

Since that day bar code technology has become the way companies manage inventory, monitor product quality and capture lots of interesting data with just a quick scan. Not only can you check yourself out at the supermarket, you can even scan as you shop with new technology in play.

One new tool is the Motorola MC17 Retail Mobile Computer that lets customers scan items while they shop to reduce time in the checkout link and even lets you create gift lists as you shop. Modiv Shopper even pushes coupons and promotions to users based on a shopper's personal shopping history.

The Stop & Shop supermarket company is now using this personal shopper solution in 250 Stop & Shop and Giant Food stores and has branded it as “Scan It!” Now if the company, and every other supermarket, would just get rid of those tiny plastic bags for carrying groceries, and everyone used "green" tote bags, it would be a better world.

But, back to the bar code and its big birthday this year.

Here are some fun facts, courtesy of Motorola, that I bet you didn’t know about the technology.

Before the bar code, every company had its own way of designating its products, using a variety of letters, numbers or no codes at all.The typical error rate for human data entry is one error per 300 characters; with bar code scanners, the error rate can be as good as one error in 36 trillion characters. Bar codes provide significant economic and productivity gains for shoppers, retailers and manufacturers with an estimated cost savings of $17 billion in the grocery sector alone (according to GS1 US).Today, bar codes are scanned more than 10 billion times a day in applications spanning more than 25 industries. It costs about US $0.005 to implement a bar code.

No wonder the bar code is the technology of the supply chain everywhere and anywhere, and is now on the brink of making medical processes and treatment safer than ever.

Increasingly, bar code scanning is being used to double check that prescriptions are being administered to the right patient, and even tracks and helps repair medical devices used for testing and patient assessment. According to a recent Motorola study, the technology has the capability to reduce medical errors by ensuring the correct medicine bottle is being delivered to the right person. The study reported that over 80 percent of global health care IT leaders are looking to use mobile technologies this year.

IT leaders polled said reducing manual errors, improving medical order fulfillment and better employee productivity are all benefits of mobile technologies, which have been shown to cut manual errors in medical environments by 31 percent, according to the study.

Glitches in medication dosage and wrong prescriptions are among the top medical errors that injure at least 1.5 million people every year, notes the study.