Medinorma LLC has been asked to realise a pilot, to secure traceability of sterile productions from the central sterilisation to the users (wards, operation rooms) . The mandate has been delivered together by the University Hospital of Dijon and by Gencod EAN-France (GS1 France).
Five months were necessary from the kick off to the launch (January-Mai 2004). The pilot run until end of summer 2004.

The central sterilisation benefits of a modern software to manage the product flow from the receipt to the stage "ready to deliver", through each single step of the sterilisation processes. Sets and articles are identified at the end of the processes with a barcode referring to a proprietary Id delivered by the software.
Central seterilisation staff scan this barcode and associate this with the transport unit (a box or a mobile cupboard). The transport units are identified with a "Global Returnable Asset Identifier" which is one of the identifiers in the EAN.UCC family.

Staff from the logistics unit take the transport units and scan the "Global Location Number" on them, indicating the delivery place.
At delivery, the scanning process include the verification that the tranport unit and the delivery place do correspond.

The scheme describes the flow of the clean and sterile (green) products from the central sterilisation to the users, and flow of the dirty (red) products on their way back to the central sterilisation.