JSCC Bar Code Standards for Specimen Container Identification for an Automated Transportation System in Clinical Laboratories

Abstract

The guidelines submitted by the Japan Society for Clinical Laboratory Automation in 1992 presented the first standards concerning the bar codes used for laboratory examination. NW-7 (Codabar) was recommended in the guidelines, however, could not be harmonized with the international standards because it uses only numerical characters and is not registered to the ISO standards. Our new standard, described here, adopts Code 128 which accommodates not only numerals but also letters registered to the ISO standards.