The GS1 System is currently transforming Healthcare logistics by synergising transactions involving other sectors like Fast Moving Consumer Goods and Foodstuffs.

Logistics for medical products – namely, drugs and medical devices - was until recently contained within national borders. Liberalisation has brought with it opportunities for developing relationships between manufacturers, pre-wholesalers, wholesalers, distributors, retailers and hospitals, involving wider product assortments and/or expanded markets. This opens the way to much more closely integrated logistics, uniting sectors which previously ran on separate lines.
Managing this evolution efficiently, with integrated logistics, brings important benefits :

Integrated logistics entails the same identification system for articles and products across a variety of markets. In this way, the supplier does not have to manage different product identification systems (sometimes for the same items ) in parallel in order to comply with unmatched requests from different markets or distribution channels in the same region. And the customer – typically a hospital - no longer has to deal with multiple data structures for product information

Integrated logistics give customers and suppliers the benefit of the same identification system in different global applications. For instance, the GS1 System is used synergistically in Switzerland for federal narcotics control.

Integrated logistics combines certain areas of process automatisation, like ordering, delivering, invoicing and sales reports to make it possible to manage reduced, displaced or outsourced stocks. These kinds of electronic data exchange are part of the GS1 System, used by a growing number of companies around the world. Healthcare logistics can also greatly benefit from this know-how.