Frimley Park Hospital chooses Sato wristbands for its most delicate patients

Frimley Park Hospital NHS Trust in Surrey has an added element of care required for the patients admitted to its Special Care Baby Unit, and so when looking for a new wristband solution to use for their smallest and most vulnerable patients it had two major requirements. Firstly, wristbands had to be made out of a very soft material that would be suitable to be worn against the delicate skin of new babies, and secondly due to NHS Patient Safety Guidelines, all patient identification wristbands should be produced from electronic data sourced from the hospital patient administration system.

Measured against these requirements and after extensive trials, Frimley Park Hospital chose Sato, a major international supplier of Data Collection Systems and labelling, to provide its self-adhesive paediatric/infant soft wristband.

Made from an extremely soft and latex-free material, Sato's wristbands fit easily and snugly on the infants' ankles and carry both human readable information and barcode data, including the hospital case number and baby's NHS number. This ability to effectively detail crucial information provides a valuable addition to the existing patient identification and security systems for the patient and provides the opportunity to automate some of the monitoring and recording processes essential to measuring the baby's progress on the ward.

The Sato range of wristbands provide comfort in wear and safer, more secure identification for patients by providing text that is easy to read for hospital staff but also has automatically readable barcode features. Sato's wristbands are considerably softer and easier to wear than many other leading brands available.

Staff at the Frimley Hospital commented on the SATO solution:

"We feel that the Sato patient safety wristband stands out against other solutions on the market for the newborns in our unit as the design not only ensures it is comfortable and safe for the babies to wear but it also enables correct identification to guarantee the right patient gets the right medication and treatment. In addition to that, the presence of barcode auto-ID features makes possible the future use of automated data collection by our bedside IT systems.

Feedback has also confirmed that the wristbands are easy to use and attach to babies and the softness of the material means that there is no marking or indentation on their skin. The design of the wristband makes it easy to access the required information on the patient without disturbing the baby. Overall, Sato's wristband solution has become a valuable addition to our unit's existing patient care processes and procedures."

Sato also makes soft-type wristbands for adults and general use, which means that all categories of patients who may have delicate, easily damaged skin can benefit. SATO works in healthcare to make identification and data transmission more accurate and efficient in many areas in addition to patient wristbands such as specimen identification labelling, sterile services, blood banks, laboratories.

Sato is a GS1 accredited Solution Partner and offers solutions which are compliant with the new ISB1077 wristband standard.