News

GSMP Patient & Care Giver ID Work Group  CR #: 09-000138Resumes Regularly Scheduled Meetings

The Call to Action for this Working Group was published on May 28, 2009. The group suspended its work at the end of October 2009, with existing members committing to expand the number of participating subject matter experts. In the first half 2010, the Joint Initiative Council (JIC, where ISO TC 215, CEN TC 251, HL7, CDISC, IHTSDO and GS1 are represented) adopted the subject "Health informatics - Automatic identification and data capture marking and labeling -Patient and caregiver identification" as a joint work effort, which is lead by GS1 and follows the GSMP rules.  New experts from the JIC  are joining the GSMP Patient & Care Giver Work Group and each GS1 Member Organization is also invited to recruit subject matter experts from Hospitals, Health Insurances, or other Healthcare Organizations to participate. Members of the working group will resume regular meetings on October 5, 2010 at the scheduled meeting times (7.00 - 8.30 EDT; 13.00 - 14.30 CET). For additional information please contact Christian Hay, GS1 Switzerland, christian.hay@gs1.org.

New standard gives added flexibility to EPC RFID tags

The EPCglobal board and GS1 Board Committee for Standards (BCS) have recently approved a new version of an important standard that defines how data on RFID tags should be encoded to follow GS1 EPCglobal standards. Tag Data Standard version 1.5 provides the following enhancements:
• 60-Day GS1 Architecture Group comments resolved
    -  Relationship between EPC and GS1 keys more clearly defined
    -  Gaps between EPC and GS1 General Specifications addressed
• Filter values for SGTIN and SSCC have been updated and new filter values added
• Attribute bits have been defined in the EPC memory bank with first bit assigned to Hazardous MaterialsDocument restructured to make it easier to understand

In addition, the new version of the standard addresses two news areas by defining:
• Encoding and decoding rules for implementing GS1 Application Identifiers in the User Memory.
• Data structures in another RFID tag memory bank, Tag ID for allowing manufacturers to provide chip serialization and much more.

"The new version of the standard reflects extensive research into user requirements. It will enable a range of new standards-based RFID applications that will be beneficial to end users. The encoding of open-system data in User Memory could potentially facilitate returns processing, recycling, maintenance, and other uses that can enhance the value of RFID tagging," commented Rick Schuessler (Motorola) who chaired the work group that developed the standard.

GS1 is now forming a new work group to create the next version of the Tag Data Standard, TDS 1.6, which will address requirements from Aerospace & Defense as well as Consumer choice initiatives. The full standard can be downloaded from www.epcglobalinc.org/standards/tds. For more information and to get involved, contact Mark Frey at mark.frey@gs1.org.