Health Industry Business Communications Council


The Health Industry Business Communications Council is the primary standard-setting and educational organization for healthcare bar coding.

History

The Health Industry Business Communications Council was established in 1983 as an industry-sponsored nonprofit council by major health care associations to develop a standard for data transfer using uniform bar code labeling. Over time, it has expanded its focus to include additional electronic data interchange standards.

Governance and overview

In collaboration with the standardisation attempts of the international healthcare industry, the council administers and maintains the following standards and services:
A board of directors oversees operations and sets policy. Members are appointed from the ranks of the council's member organizations, which represent the healthcare industry. Previous and current appointments have been made by various organizations, including:
The Health Industry Business Communications Council's broad mission consistently expands to meet industry requirements. The council is involved in a number of areas including electronic data interchange message formats, bar code labeling data standards, universal numbering systems, and the provision of databases which assure common identifiers.

Health Industry Bar Code international standards

The Health Industry Bar Code is an industrial standard. It applies a versatile and technology independent data structure for unique identification of medical devices.
The Health Industry Business Communications Council is accredited by the American National Standards Institute. Its primary function is to support electronic communications by developing appropriate standards for information exchange among healthcare trading partners. The bar code has been standardized in the institute's2.5:2015 and referenced by ISO/IEC 15418: 2016.
The first letter in the visible code and in the optical and electronic codes is a worldwide reserved + sign, according to ISO/IEC 15418:2016.
The application of coding according to standard ANSI HIBC 2.5:2015 and ISO/IEC 15418:2016 is free of charge. Only formal registration of the labeler identification code is subject to a license fee.
The preferred code symbologies and technologies to represent bar code are:
Millions of medical and surgical products as tools and pharmaca regularly bear the Health Industry Bar Code Standard label.
A distinguishing characteristic of the Health Industry Bar Code is that it permits encoding of both alphabetic and numeric characters, thereby providing manufacturers the ability to directly encode their product identifications, many of which are alphanumeric. This eliminates the need to convert them to all-numeric substitutes, which in turn reduces the possibility of encoding errors. These must be minimized to avoid medical errors caused by incorrect product identification in hospitals. Hence companies that use the Heath Industry Bard Code labeling format are in compliance with voluntary standards in the institutional healthcare supply channel.

Auto-ID/technical committee

The Auto-ID/UPN Committee maintains Health Industry Bar Code standards which provide healthcare-specific data structures and labeling options for medical/surgical products and patient care. The committee is composed of healthcare manufacturer, distributor and provider representatives, and companies that develop automatic identification equipment. The committee functions and conducts its activities in conformance with all American National Standards Institute requirements.

Health Industry Number

The Health Industry Number is a nine-character, alphanumeric identifier assigned to every facility, delivery location and business activity in the healthcare supply chain. Each number is consistent, unique and flexible enough to represent a facility and the numerous ship-to locations within its organization. The number consists of a 7-character base and a 2-character suffix.
The base Health Industry Number consists of 6 alphanumeric characters followed by a single modulo 36 check digit. System developers can confirm the validity of a Health Industry Number by summing the values of the first six characters, taking the modulo 36 of this sum, and compare it to the value of the 7th digit. For example, given a Health Industry Number of '740WL3V00', the base number is '740WL3V', which computes as 7 + 4 + 0 + 32 + 21 + 3 = 67. 67 modulo 36 = 31. The value of the 7th digit is V, and given V=31, the Health Industry Number is valid.
Suffix validation requires additional investigation. Record layout specifications indicate the suffix is always “ØØ” for facility records, or a sequentially ascending suffix beginning at “FØ” for prescriber or location records. This means a suffix of '10' is invalid.
As administrator of the Health Industry Number system, the Health Industry Business Communications Council applies a uniform identification standard to all entities submitted for enumeration. The standardization process includes a review to eliminate database duplication and information verification. Since inception, the number of records in the Health Industry Number database has grown from 7,000 hospitals to more than 1.5 million facility records.
The Health Industry Number has become an integral component of many supply chain processes, including membership and pricing eligibility. Industry trading partners access the database via the online Health Industry Business Communications Council iHealth Industry Number web site, as well as via EDI transmissions from the Health Industry Business Communications Council, several Value Added Networks, and by periodic distributions of the full database from the Health Industry Business Communications Council.
The Health Industry Number system is intended to be a “bridge” between a company’s internal account numbers and the account numbers of its trading partners. Through a centralized and standardized repository, the system provides consistency and accuracy of customer identification for hundreds of major manufacturers, distributors and provider organizations, as well as US government agencies such as the Department of Defense, US Public Health Service, the Veterans' Administration Hospital System, and the Centers for Disease Control.
At present, the Health Industry Number database includes hospitals, nursing homes, clinics, buying groups, pharmacies, manufacturers, distributors – virtually any entity providing service in the healthcare supply chain. It is widely used in both the private and public sector for e-commerce transmissions.

Health Industry Number User Group

The Health Industry Number User Group provides a forum for subscribers to address questions about the system with council staff and other users. The User Group is also responsible for maintaining and updating the database structure, reviewing industry activities related to database structure, and developing marketing and educational strategies.

HIN databases