July Product Updates
At Symmetric, we continuously strive to improve our item data, enhance data source accessibility, and provide quality reporting of customer item metrics. We understand the pivotal role of data in today’s healthcare supply chain landscape, which is why we’re dedicated to staying at the forefront of innovation. Our latest enhancements include expanded data source visibility, user experience upgrades, enhanced reporting of duplicates and GTINs, and database wide advancements of our description building algorithms.
IJuly 5, 2023
3 minute read
At Symmetric, we continuously strive to improve our item data, enhance data source accessibility, and provide quality reporting of customer item metrics. We understand the pivotal role of data in today’s healthcare supply chain landscape, which is why we’re dedicated to staying at the forefront of innovation. Our latest enhancements include expanded data source visibility, user experience upgrades, enhanced reporting of duplicates and GTINs, and database wide advancements of our description building algorithms.
Contact Symmetric at support@symmetrichs.com with any questions or additional feedback.
Description Improvements
Our Symmetric Data team has been diligently enhancing our description building logic, resulting in over 2 million records being improved in the month of June. These improvements encompassed the elimination of duplicate words, better abbreviations, consistent size placement, and maintaining generic name (noun 1, adjective 1) consistency across all records. We have included examples below for your reference.
We are continuously working on improving our size parsing to ensure consistency in size order, avoid missing sizes, and eliminate size duplication in product descriptions. Stay tuned for these future updates!
Example 1
new: GLOVE SURGICAL SZ7.5 PCP PF S LF DISP SNS 340806 NEOP
old: GLOVE SURGICAL PCP PF S LF DISP SNS 340806 SZ 7.5 NEOP
Example 2
new: LENS IOL 12D 12.5MM ENVISTA MX60 POST CHMB PSEUDOPHAKIC S DISP MX60TP500
old: LENS IOL 12.5MM ENVISTA MX60 POST CHMB PSEUDOPHAKIC S DISP MX60TP500 12.0
Primary Data Source Attribute
This new attribute shows the main data source of an item, even though it may have multiple sources. This is a Core Symmetric Attribute and can be added to Device Searches in the terminal.
Multi-Select Attributes
Select multiple columns to keep or remove by pressing the SHIFT or CTRL key to expose checkboxes in column headers.
More Recent GTINs Report
Downloads the list of Mapped GTINs that are more recent than GTINs currently loaded into your source system.
Duplicates Report Moved to Devices Tab
Information on duplicate items is available on the Match Summary Page or as an attribute in the Devices view of the Terminal. We recommend downloading from the Devices Tab to view all duplicate groups together.
Symmetric Strengthens Device Integrity for SVS VQI Registry
The Society for Vascular Surgery® Vascular Quality Initiative® (SVS VQI) collects important data from over 1,000 medical centers and hospitals to improve vascular care. However, they faced challenges in accurately capturing device information at the point of care. To solve this, SVS VQI partnered with Symmetric Health Solutions. This partnership allows SVS VQI to access reliable device information, ensuring patient safety and better clinical care.
June 5, 2023
1 minute read
The Society for Vascular Surgery® Vascular Quality Initiative® (SVS VQI) collects important data from over 1,000 medical centers and hospitals to improve vascular care. However, they faced challenges in accurately capturing device information at the point of care. To solve this, SVS VQI partnered with Symmetric Health Solutions. This partnership allows SVS VQI to access reliable device information, ensuring patient safety and better clinical care.
The partnership has already shown positive results in the Peripheral Vascular Intervention (PVI) registry. The registry has captured over 35,000 devices, with a 257% increase in additional device attributes using Symmetric Health Solutions APIs compared to what is currently available in AccessGUDID. This eliminates manual maintenance, enhances patient safety, and opens up new research opportunities. The integration of Symmetric Health Solutions technology into SVS VQI’s platform provides real-time device data and improves decision making.
Our partnership with Symmetric Health Solutions and Fivos eliminates problems with missing data, such as device diameters and length, and better positions SVS VQI to show improvements in clinical quality related to vascular devices. We’re grateful for the advancements in vascular care, workflows, and patient safety that have resulted from this joint venture.
-Jens Eldrup-Jorgensen, MD- Medical director, SVS Patient Safety Organization
Learn more:SVS VQI Strengthens Device Data Integrity with Symmetric Health Solutions
Identifying A Single Point of Truth Across the Healthcare Supply Chain: The Role of GTINs in Healthcare Data Management
Global Trade Item Numbers (GTINs) ensure that a hospital has accurate and up-to-date information on medical devices through the healthcare supply chain. These unique identification numbers are assigned to each device by the manufacturer, and are used to accurately track and identify the device throughout its entire lifecycle, from entering the hospital to being used on a patient. GTINs are bar codes that are unique to each product within the healthcare industry; however, their use is drastically lower than similar retail applications. Why? Because manually adding individual GTINs to a sizeable, constantly changing item master is time-consuming and tedious. Symmetric Health Solutions is on the cutting edge of increasing adoption and therefore speeding up procurement and charge activities by enriching the item masters with their comprehensive database of GTINs.
February 20, 2023
3 minute read
Global Trade Item Numbers (GTINs) ensure that a hospital has accurate and up-to-date information on medical devices through the healthcare supply chain. These unique identification numbers are assigned to each device by the manufacturer, and are used to accurately track and identify the device throughout its entire lifecycle, from entering the hospital to being used on a patient. GTINs are bar codes that are unique to each product within the healthcare industry; however, their use is drastically lower than similar retail applications. Why? Because manually adding individual GTINs to a sizeable, constantly changing item master is time-consuming and tedious. Symmetric Health Solutions is on the cutting edge of increasing adoption and therefore speeding up procurement and charge activities by enriching the item masters with their comprehensive database of GTINs.
In the past, hospitals needed help maintaining accurate and up-to-date information on their medical devices. This help was sought by seeking data from manufacturers, distributors, GPOs, and regulatory entities like the FDA and GUDID. However, with so many different devices in use and new technologies constantly emerging, it can be difficult to keep track of which devices are in use, which need to be reordered, and which have been phased out. This is where GTINs come in.
By assigning a unique GTIN to each device, manufacturers are able to provide hospitals with a single point of truth for tracking and identifying devices as they move through a hospital. This makes it much easier for hospitals to keep their item master up to date, and to quickly and easily identify devices that need to be reordered.
GTINs also play an essential role in tracking items across procurement and charge. By assigning a unique GTIN to each device, hospitals can track the usage and cost of each device more accurately. This is particularly important for devices used frequently or at a high cost, as it allows hospitals to more effectively manage their budgets and ensure they get the most value for their money.
Beyond saving money, using GTINs at the point of care provides clinicians with a rich data set to improve patient safety. Connecting individual patient records to specific devices creates the unique opportunity to follow long term patient outcomes, identify trends in device usage and outcomes by procedure, demographic, location, etc., quickly notify individuals impacted by recalls, and easily identify recalled devices currently in hospital inventories. This data could be a spark that drives innovation in the medical device industry, so that things like recalls and malfunctions become less prevalent. The gap between new recalls and patient notification could be reduced from months or over a year to days or weeks. New, automated systems could be created, similar to those used by car manufacturers when a recall is issued so that the impacts of device malfunctions are minimized.
GTINS are a vital tool for hospitals, enabling them to improve their medical device inventory management efficiency and accuracy and increase patient safety. By providing a single point of truth for tracking and identifying devices, GTINs make it much easier for hospitals to keep their medical devices in order, quickly and easily identify devices that need to be reordered or that are recalled, and quickly notify patients when they are impacted by a recall, which ultimately leads to better care for patients.
Advocacy Opportunity: Adding UDI to Claims Data
Did you ever stop to think about how many items we scan these days - groceries, boarding passes, passports? The first scanned product was a 10-pack of Wrigley's Juicy Fruit gum using a universal product code (UPC) as a standard item identifier in a retail store. Since then, linking scanned products to consumers has transformed how organizations track purchases, optimize workflows, increase revenues, and develop new items or services.
November 30, 2022
3 minute read
Did you ever stop to think about how many items we scan these days - groceries, boarding passes, passports? The first scanned product was a 10-pack of Wrigley's Juicy Fruit gum using a universal product code (UPC) as a standard item identifier in a retail store. Since then, linking scanned products to consumers has transformed how organizations track purchases, optimize workflows, increase revenues, and develop new items or services.
One crucial area where we do not routinely scan, where we do not insist on the use of standard Unique Device Identifiers (UDIs), is the healthcare claim - the request for payment that a consumer or healthcare provider submits to an insurer to pay for covered items or services. UDI was introduced as a Federally required barcode/identifier in 2013 (see June 2020 Symmetric blog for more details about UDI). The UDI barcode is now on the label of over 3.7 million device models, representing hundreds of millions of products, and linked to an open FDA data source - AccessGUDID. Hospitals are adopting UDI, health IT vendors are incorporating UDI data into their supply chain, clinical, and registry applications, but we are not at the tipping point of seeing UDI used to scan and link patients to the devices used in medical procedures.
Unlike UPC, the UDI is not yet included in the claims software that transmits charges and receives payments. Providers and patients file claims to obtain reimbursement from a payer like the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) or a private insurance company. This claims data is relied upon to manage costs and and revenues, monitor procedure and other resource usage, and evaluate patient care. Healthcare experts believe that linking the capture of UDI to the additional information captured in claims, especially for implants, will be a game changer for incentivizing hospitals to scan and make more widespread use of UDI.
On January 18-19 2023, the National Committee for Vital and Health Statistics (NCVHS) will hear public comments on whether UDI would be a valuable addition to healthcare claims. Following the hearing NCVHS will make recommendations to CMS on whether to include UDI in regulations calling for the update of X12, the standard used by software vendors to transmit claims data. Until December 15th, NCVHS is requesting written public comments as described in this recent announcement.
Symmetric Health Solutions believes in a world based upon data transparency. Including UDI in claims data is a major step that aligns with our mission to provide the most accurate, comprehensive, and timely healthcare information. If you believe that it is important to better understand device usage and patient outcomes at the product level, we encourage you to read and provide your comments to NCVHS.
Terrie Reed
Symmetric Chief Strategy Officer