SMI Announces Member Progress on Data Standards Adoption

Scituate, MA (December 2, 2009):  At the recent Strategic Marketplace Initiative (SMI) Forum in Orlando, the results of SMI member self-reported adoption of the GS1 US Healthcare data standards were announced. More than half of the SMI members reported that they have made progress in adopting the Global Location Number (GLN), which has an industry sunrise goal of December 2010.  While these SMI members report continuing efforts to establish and organize their hierarchies in the GLN Registry for Healthcare®, 12 SMI members reported they have already successfully conducted purchase transactions using the GLN as the location identifier. “SMI and its members continue to provide leadership in the growing industry movement to adopt the GS1 data standards,” said Tom Hughes, SMI’s Executive Director. “That leadership is evidenced by how many of our members are actually beginning to use the standards.”

SMI members also self-reported over 150 separate successful adoptions within their organizations of the nine tools that SMI Initiative Teams have created to help move the healthcare supply chain industry forward. Each of these tools is available at no charge via download from the SMI web site (www.smisupplychain.com).