NHS Golden Jubilee has become the first NHS board in Scotland to roll out a patient safety programme for Cardiac, Orthopaedics and Ophthalmology medical devices.

The national Scan for Safety programme is supporting the roll out of barcode scanning technology to acute hospital departments across Scotland.

Devices include those used in eye, heart and orthopaedic hip and replacement treatments that are permanently implanted into the body.

The programme has been focused on areas which regularly use implantable devices classified as ‘high risk’ due to the device functionality in helping sustain or support life.

Patient Engagement lead for the national Scan for Safety programme, Andy Malyon, said: “The automated recording capability of Scan for Safety when used during patient procedures will instantly bring multiple benefits for boards like NHS Golden Jubilee. This will include quality improvement around data capture, to time saving benefits.

“Most critically, Scan for Safety’s data capturing technology will enable rapid traceability of high-risk medical devices. This is hugely important in any instances of product safety notices or even recalls.

“Whilst such instances remain very rare, Scan for Safety’s ability to identify impacted devices in minutes and hours, is of huge benefit when it comes to limiting any potential risk to patients.”

Scan for Safety was first rolled out in a limited capacity in the Golden Jubilee’s Cardiac service in October 2023, and has so far recorded hundreds of procedures using the technology.

Steven Friel, Scan for Safety Lead at NHS Golden Jubilee said: “Scan for Safety is a very user-friendly technology and, most importantly, from day 1 it has helped streamline several of our processes as we benefit from its automation, which includes eliminating some of our current manual recording. 

“By implementing Scan for Safety at Point of Care we have delivered net efficiencies and benefits that we now hope to extend to all clinical specialities across the Board.

“The work is an essential element of our preparations for changes to the Medical Device Regulations, requiring health institutions to ensure tractability of high risk implantable devices.

“Applying this technology into the point of care setting will benefit our organisation not just in the short term, but over time with amazing potential, helping support our aims towards longer term financial, environmental and operational sustainability.”