Traditionally, high cost procedure areas such as operating theatre, radiology and cardiology have an extremely high percentage of "non stock" items in their inventory profile in terms of value. These items are, however, held in stock and are often managed from within the department, usually by senior nursing staff.

Using the inbuilt barcode standards, our Windows Mobile handheld scanners are able to accurately identify all devices at the time of consumption, attributing their use to a particular patient/procedure and providing management with access to real time visibility of non stock device consumption aggregated by supplier.

This information can be made available as an electronic requisition or as a file for uploading to the hospital inventory management system. This enables a consumption driven approach to Supply Chain, the accepted standard in most other industries. The immediacy of the data enables extremely efficient supply chain processes to be implemented. When coupled with accurate usage data, this facilitates the optimisation of stock levels in these categories of products.