Since the 1999 publication of a landmark report by the Institute of Medicine on safety deficiencies in the delivery
of healthcare, many initiatives have been set into motion to improve patient care and prevent the 770,000 medication errors estimated by the report to take place each year in U.S. hospitals. The increasing use of bar code labels has been central to this corrective effort.

Physicians rely heavily on laboratory test results to make informed decisions regarding the care a patient receives. Bar code readers embedded in analytical instruments can help laboratories ensure that their test results are as accurate as possible by automating the data entry process. By eliminating manual entry, bar code readers take human errors out of the equation. Data integrity is ensured when patient samples and reagents are scanned.

Bar code readers help instrument designers streamline the data capture process. Also, as explained in this article, their design can further reduce the occasions for data entry errors and misreadings.