Cook Medical selects Socket barcode scanners and Apple iPhones

Socket Mobile, Inc., provider of mobile productivity solutions, has announced the selection of the Socket Bluetooth Cordless Hand Scanner (CHS) 7XiRx by Cook Medical, the world's largest privately owned medical device manufacturing company that pioneered many of the medical devices now commonly used to perform minimally invasive surgical procedures.

Cook Medical represents the first volume customer for the Socket CHS 7XiRx and is using the barcode scanner in conjunction with the Apple iPhone to monitor customer and field-based inventories of medical devices with their application, Cook Scan.

"Many of our field reps were already using iPhones, so when we set out to add a barcode scanner into the mix we were looking for something robust and reliable that could be easily customized to work flawlessly with our application and the iPhone," said Scott Todd, sales operations manager at Cook Medical. "The CHS 7XiRx coupled with the SocketScan 10 SDK really fit the bill -- the technical documentation is great; between that and the sample code, we were able to glean everything we needed for implementation within four weeks."

"The Cook Scan solution reduces the amount of time that our field-based representatives need to spend tracking their inventory and also increases data accuracy," said Todd. "It also helps provide more effective inventory management by keeping a closer watch of inventory turns, and allows us to rotate products that are nearing expiration."

The Cook Scan solution will be initially deployed in the United States and Canada to over 600 field representatives for use with their inventories, and will be used in over 1,000 hospitals to manage consignment inventories.

"As the number of applications for smartphones and tablets continues to grow, particularly in the field service sector and within the healthcare market segment, it is increasingly important to have a high-performance barcode scanner that is capable of preserving data accuracy while also being compatible with a range of operating systems and platforms popular among end users," said Samantha Chu, data collection product manager at Socket Mobile.

The Apple iOS certified CHS 7Xi and 7XiRx and the associated SocketScan 10 SDK are highly versatile barcode scanning tools that enable developers to add commercial-grade rapid and robust barcode scanning capabilities to their iPad, iPhone or iPod touch applications. The SDK also supports many other smartphone, tablet, notebook and desktop platforms, including Android, BlackBerry and Windows.