Abstract
We have developed a new checking system for dispensing of powder drugs employing two--dimensional barcode symbology (2D-barcode). The 2D-barcode has high density and high capacity of encoding over kilobyte of data per label. This capability is superior to the commercially based system using a linear barcode at the followings:(1) The 2D-barcode can hold all of the necessary dispensing data; drug name, generic name, usual dosage and usual prescribing limits.(2) No database files are required for necessary item data which can be carried on the 2D-barcode.(3) The 2D-barcode is an error-correcting symbology designed for the hospital applications where portions of labels can make handling useless. It performs error corrections by making cal culations, if necessary, to reconstruct undecoded or corrup ted portions of the symbol.
