I am going to have to purchase new barcoders for ISBT 128. Our computer system is Cerner Millennium. I would prefer the wand type rather than the "gun" type. I would appreciate hearing about your experiences with different models and brands. Thanks.

I haven't seen a wand reader on a Blood Bank computer system in about 20 years. They're less accurate than the gun type, which scans the barcode several times before accepting, and requires you to physically touch the barcode.

While there is no perfect barcode reader, ISBT-128 is better than Codabar for accuracy.

Cerner may only allow certain models to be attached to their system. Check with them to see what they will allow.

Thanks. Our wand readers are only 5 years old.

We selected wand-typereaders when our computer system went up about 4 years ago, because the gun style readers were reading multiple bar codes off the bag at once and we couldn't get them to work without doing this. This caused problems while trying to scan our units into our computer system. We have not had any issues with our wand readers.

Now, with ISBT coming down the pike, we will probably wish we had this function (concantenation, did I spell that right?), so future readers will be of this type.

If your bar code scanners can read Code 128, they should be able to read ISBT without any problem, ours do.

Linda Frederick

Please be aware that you are going to scan 10 mil "X" dimension bar codes on bag and 6.6 mil hight density on tubes with ISBT128 and wands have fixed appatures and might be very limiting besides only scanning once per hand swipe. Very dependend on user versus 100 scans per second with laser or CCD devices.

Thanks.

Thanks. What is CCD? Any suggestions on brand names?

CCD stands for charged couple device and some scanner use this technology or a camera to tage a digital picture of the bar code rather then a laser to read. Our company provides laser technology from Symbol (corded) or Metrologics(bluetooth) for ISBT128 concatenation. See www.digi-trax.com; (hardware scanners).

I like the gun scanners. We have gotten quite adept at covering the other codes when scanning or holding it just so to miss them. Maybe the new wands are better than the last ones I used, but it was no match for the guns. We have one cordless gun which is kind of a nice idea.