Proposal

                                      for

                               Hospital Barcoding

                                   Copyright
                                 March 1, 1991
                                      by





                                Jerry Drummond

                     all rights, patents, and inventions
                     associated with, derived from, and
                     contained within this proposal are
                  the exclusive property of the originator


                                       I

                                    Premise

In my job, we badge employees of companies so that they can then use the badges
to gain access to areas where they are allowed, according to their security
clearance, and disallowed access where they don't have proper clearance.

In this pursuit, I came up with an application that is not currently being
addressed, and I sent it to various members to our company, who have seen
no reason to either respond, in the affirmative or the negative. Assuming this
means they are not interested in this application, I have copyrighted this idea,
and am offering it to anyone who would like to help me implement and market this
idea.

As hospitalization insurance premiums climb to the stratosphere, and malpractice
insurance is making it extremely difficult for even the best doctors to practice
in this country, I thought it was time to take positive steps to alleviate some
of the reasons for these developments. One of the worst things that can happen
in any hospital, is for the wrong patient to be in the wrong operating room, at
the wrong time, causing confusion, and, in some instances, even a patient to
receive an unecessary operation, some times resulting in death.

                                  Application


For the above named reason, and just to keep track of the proper care and
medication of patients, it would be advantageous to be able to simply "tag"
patients the same way grocery stores "tag" food items, with barcodes.

These barcodes could be added to the familiar patient Bracelet, currently being
worn in hospitals, or, a barcode could be tattooed on the patient, using ink
that could be removed with a special solvent, or "time erase" ink , like those
tiny time pills, that would fade after a certain time period. Give each
attending nurse and physician a notebook PC; in the case of the physician, scan
the patient's code to open the record, using a light attached to the PC, enter
treatments to be administered into the record, without chance of accessing the
wrong record, scan the bracelet to close the record. There could be infrared
links to a mainframe in each room to upload the entries into a master database.
The nurse scans the patient for every treatment given, the patient's barcode
must match the treatment order barcode, if physical therapy, or the barcode on
the pills to be administered, and, if not , an alarm sounds and th erecord is
flagged noting that the treatment has not been ordered, properly documented, or
is an exceptional occurrence, such as difibrulation during a heart attack.

In a similar fashion, if a patient does not match the barcode expected by the
check station in the operating room, the attendants are notified by an alarm,
which could be over ridden in the case of an emergency. Keeping track of
patients and treatments is probably not as large a problem as is publicly
theorized, but even one wrong operation or misapplication of medication is one
too many.

Upon leaving the hospital, the receptionist scans the barcode, prior to removal,
in the case of a bracelet; prior to cleaning, in the case of removable skin
barcodes, and a bill and/or receipt are automatically tallied and given to the
patient, or sent to the insurance company. All occurrences involving a patient
are, therefore, thoroughly documented, for treatment tracking, legal purposes,
and billing.

I believe that this appliction is workable, within the realm of current
technology, and would aid hospital efficiency, safety, and expense
accountability.

                                 Barcode Tool

The barcode could be applied by a simple, portable device much like the
programmable head of a dot matrix printer, injecting a harmless die into the
skin of the patient, creating a barcode, or onto the bracelet of the patient,
actually in the hospital room, upon admittance.

Such a device, and similar applications, could be used for soldiers, aiding in
recovery of remains, for airline passengers, in the case of an accident, or to
tag children, on an inconspicuous part of the body, as a hedge against
kidnapping.