Bar Code Metal Plates Track Valuable Medical Equipment
Enter any hospital room and look at the medical devices. There will always be a bar code metal plate attached to the side. This bar code metal plates ensures the hospital they can track the location of their equipment, and use it where it is needed. Inter venous drip machines can cost thousands of dollars to replace, but without tracking can be easily misplaced in a hospital with hundreds of rooms. Nurses are sent out with bar code scanners to scan every type of medicine that is administered, each pill or solution dispensed. This reduces medical prescribing errors, but also ensures adequate billing. Double checking and sometime triple checking what type of medicine a patient receives can be life saving if a patient has a negative reaction. Neutralizing an allergic reaction is simpler if the exact medicine is known from the bar code instead of guessing at a doctor or intern's scrawled notes. When a patient goes through multiple doctors and nurses in a single day, accessibility of information is very important. In a neonatal intensive care unit, the breast pumps the mothers of the new born babies and premature infants use are expensive. Specially designed to help the mother's traumatized and stressed body be able to establish a milk supply for her child that must be separate from her, the breast pumps cost over a thousand dollars each. Tracking the pumps with bar code metal plates ensures the mother who needs to pump to feed her baby has the ability to do so. The nurses can track down a pump quickly through the use of the bar code tracking system. Hospitals do not have a monopoly on bar code metal plates use through a company like Artcraft Nameplate, though. Institutions like colleges and school districts also use bar code metal plates to track their equipment. In the eighties, it was often giant televisions wheeled into classrooms for watching a video. Now, it is the different pieces of audio visual equipment in conjunction with computer equipment that have a unique bar code metal plate. The beauty of using metal plates for bar codes is the lasting identification. Trying to remove the metal plates is difficult and often requires special equipment. Better yet, not removing them at all helps a permanent marking of ownership of the equipment in question. Beyond just ownership record, bar codes are used in multiple ways across the globe. Tracking shipments of online purchases from stores like Amazon has become an expanding theme in some households and businesses. Especially around the holidays, shipping packages can be confusing for many people. Before the use of tracking bar codes implemented by the United States Postal Service, United Parcel Service and Federal Express, a person was left to wonder where a package was and if it had arrived at its intended destination. Now, when you mail a package, you can receive a tracking number, unique to your package. If you have a shipment of multiple boxes going to the same location, the shipment can be tracked as a unique identity, even if some of the boxes get separated. Each box has a number, each shipment has a number. These numbers are encoded in the bar codes. Tracking numbers are scanned and recorded every time they go through a certain place. When the package is picked up at the post office, or dropped off at a home or business, the bar code is scanned one last time. Delivery of goods has never been easier because of the use of bar codes to track shipments of packages. Thank a bar code UPC the next time you eat or buy anything, because bar codes helped it get to you.Share
