Using Barcodes in Bahmni
One of the main goals of Bahmni or any EMR system is to reduce manual effort and errors in data entry. Using barcodes for patient scan can lessen the burden of registration clerks who see huge crowd of around 600 patients in a day in a lot of places where Bahmni is implemented. This can help avoid mistakes which occur with typing the identifier manually like creating duplicate patients in the system, or starting a visit for the incorrect patient. For instance, in some cases many people from a single village in India can have the same surnames. A barcode lookup will ensure one does not edit data for the wrong patient.
Barcodes
One of the Bahmni Implementations at Sierra Leone by Partners in Health, has used Barcode printing & scanning for patient registration. I thought I should write a blog on how this can be achieved for others too.
Barcodes are optical, machine readable representation of data. There are different types of barcodes. One of the type being linear (1d) where data is represented in widths and spacing of parallel lines.
A Barcode scanner consists of three parts : Illuminator, Decoder and a Sensor. Using illuminator system with red light, the scanner illuminates the barcode. The reflected light is detected by the sensor and generates an analog signal. Depending on the intensities of light reflection, the…
