Just-1 is the name of a new campaign to promote the use of the 13-digit Global Location Number (GLN) in the healthcare sector. The idea is that just using this one simple standard will bring major benefits to the industry – and to patient safety: “Just one validated GLN is all a hospital or healthcare provider will need to begin issuing purchase orders electronically under the GS1 standard.
GLNs may then be encoded in a GS1 bar code and used to identify ship-to, bill-to and purchased-from information, among other functional data and locations. This will help bring healthcare providers up to the same standard of efficiency and accuracy already achieved in other sectors of the economy, such as retail and grocery stores.” The code can also be used to identify other entities including parties and devices.
Successful data standards grow from the urgent needs of the communities they serve. The major business benefit of any standard lies in the acceptance of its core elements. The 80/20 rule plays a part here, in that a small number of elements tend to supply the larger part of the benefits. However, success in the core area also leads to reprioritization of more peripheral areas. Once organizations in healthcare are working happily with the GLN, they'll come to see value in other standards as well.
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