I don’t think you give enough credit to our survey’s respondents. Two out of three respondents have more than ten years of healthcare supply chain experience, and forty-five percent have more than twenty years of experience working in the healthcare supply chain. Experienced professionals are capable of deciding between these multiple choice options. Respondents were asked to specify the “Other system.” The exact question wording is below.

• Is your organization moving towards the adoption of a data standards system (such as GS1) in the next five years?
o Yes – GS1
o Yes – Other (Please specify) ____________________________
o No
o Don’t Know

The expert interviews conducted when vetting questions for the survey clearly indicated that there was confusion in the industry about what a data standards system was. The responses to the open ended (Yes – Other) question are below. You can see that some confusion does exist.

Response Count %
Do Not Know 44 61%
UNSPSC (United Nations Standard Products and Services Code) 9 13%
GS1 6 8%
Government 3 4%
Lawson 2 3%
GHX 2 3%
SAP 1 1%
KPI’s 1 1%
HIBCC (Health Industry Business Communications Council) 1 1%
GIP 1 1%
E-Clinical 1 1%
DMLSS (Defense Medical Logistics Standard Support) 1 1%
Also, please note that your summary of the results (quoted below) is incorrect.
“Over 50% of the respondents chose answer “1”, over 30% chose answer “4”, and about 20% chose answer “3”. What about answer “2”, indicating support for “other” data standards systems? Only about 3%.”
The most common response is Don’t Know (47%). 31% of respondents chose “Yes-GS1,” 17% chose “No,” and 5% chose “Yes – Other.”

This survey did not set out to determine if the industry needs multiple competing data standards or to review the merits of different data standards systems. AHRMM conducted due diligence on this issue many years ago and publicly supported GS1. AHRMM has consistently and unambiguously declared its support of GS1 standards since 2006. It has been leading GS1 data standards adoption and implementation efforts alongside many other companies and healthcare institutions representing all sectors of the healthcare supply chain as I am sure you are aware.

Another important note: AHRMM/CIHL did not receive financial support from GS1 to conduct this survey. AHRMM has never received any financial support from GS1 or its affiliates, and Heather Nachtmann and Ed Pohl of University of Arkansas/CIHL are independent academic researchers who do not have a stake in the success of GS1 or any other data standards system.

Sarah Oaks
Associate Executive Director
AHRMM

Harry Manolopoulos

There are a number of competing standards that are related to supply chain master data including identification and data exchange among others. The good news is there is not always a best answer, "one size fits all" so ISO has established a number of standards that seek to standardize data elements and not the data tags among the standards. They recognize HIBCC, GS1, ATA, ANSI MH10 and others. So all you really need to know is what data is required and ensure clear standard definition of the data, represented by the data tags and you can ensure interoperability.

The turf war you describe needs to be about capability to meet the business need. That can be broad or sector specific applications and not settled by who has the biggest budget for advertising/propoganda. Bottom line each "Enterprise" needs to make a choice of what best fits their business processes and ensure they follow the common standard elements and definitions for data exchange to work.

1. RxTrace
2. Other
3. Don't Know

I pick answer (1).

Great post, Dirk!