Make Your Business Run Smoother With The Right Barcode Systems

We started tracking railroad cars in the 1960's and today we track everything from hospital patient's prescriptions to chain-of-custody crime evidence. Barcode applications are used anywhere information needs to be tracked. In today's world, that doesn't leave much out!

Barcode tracking software is used in law enforcement to keep track of evidence; who's is it, where was it found, the officer in charge, etc. These applications are basically database programs that manage all the information related to the evidence for a particular case. The best programs give adequate flexibility for designing the labels and printing.

In the medical industry, keeping track of patient charts has always been a major problem. The reason is clear when you see how many people handle these charts. The design of a medical chart barcode system obviously needs to connect the chart to the person who has checked it out and the time it occurred. This requires a scan of the medical staffer's ID badge and the chart code. A good system then needs to run periodic checks of the chart room to look for the inevitable discrepancies.

As with any barcode system, having access to solid reporting capabilities is mandatory. What good is information if it it's not easily accessible? Common report queries might be:

* Active File List

* Current Location of Files

* Last Location

* Time of File at Location

* Reserved List

You may have heard the term, "License plate" used in connection with barcodes. This simply refers to the idea that the information in the barcode is a database key that points to more detailed information. Some medical barcode applications are flexible enough to be used in insurance offices as well as hospitals. In these cases the insurance claim number may be used as the key instead of the patient tracking code. You can save your business a considerable amount of money by uses a good quality generic application and modifying it to work in your situation.

Barcodes make excellent visitor tracking systems and can be quick and easy to use. This is important if you need information about who visited, how long they stayed, and who they visited, and you find it saves you money to have this information entered into a database automatically. Obviously, this would be important in high traffic sensitive areas.

We also have technology today that has the capability to track items without scanning. It uses radio frequencies to identify objects with attached Radio Frequency ID tags (RFID).

RFID is much more expensive per unit and to implement than barcodes but in certain situations it makes sense. Take for example an unattended 24/7 equipment room containing very expensive tools. A simple solution is to fit an RFID sensor in the door way that detects the movement of equipment in and out of the room. The door is locked until the technician swipes a bar-coded ID badge or an RFID tag. This way, the system knows who opened the door and what equipment left or returned, and at what time.

This type of system could be used in unattended medical chart rooms too, but the problem is the number of charts is enormous and would require a relatively expensive RFID tag attached to every single chart; so this would not be cost effective under these circumstances.

With today's PC technology, easy database tools such as Microsoft Access, barcode label software, and scanners, many barcode applications can be developed easily and cheaply saving businesses an enormous amount of money each year.

If you are currently paying someone to enter data into a computer you may want to look into the merits of a barcode management system. We have read studies that show barcode scanning is about 10 times faster than a typist and about 10,000 times more accurate!

Some interesting facts about bar-coding is that almost every company that has installed a barcode system is looking for other places to use it, and the return on investment for an automated data collection system is typically one year, and often substantially less.

Vaughn Balchunas writes about technology in business, with emphasis on business processes, automation, and automated data collection. You can read more about barcode systems and equipment at http://barcodegeek.com