The company has supplied wristbands as a ticket solution throughout the two week Festival, printing around 5,500 individual wristbands. The durability and ease of printing made the wristbands an ideal solution for the festival organisers.

Brenmoor wristbands on the arms of celebrating festival goers

During the show, Ross quickly grabbed the opportunity for a mickey take by singling out Paul Brennan from Brenmoor and spent a good fifteen minutes pointing out the various comedy uses of wristbands, most of which are unrepeatable here.

Other acts to appear at the festival include, Alistair Campell, Black Voices, The Manfreds and the Proclaimers.

“Brenmoor is committed to helping reduce identification errors in the healthcare industry and our products will continue to be developed to meet the needs of both the hospital and the patient,” said Paul Brennan, a director of Brenmoor. “It’s staggering to think that one of our wristbands is used every 4 seconds, we will never know how many lives that they may have helped to save.”

The exhibition, held in Dubai is the leading event for healthcare professionals in the Middle East and was host to over 55,000 visitors from over 145 countries. The UK had its largest presence at the show this year and with continued support from UK Trade & Investment (UKTI), the UK Government’s international business development body, companies highlighted exactly why they are world leaders in healthcare innovation and excellence.

With a wealth of healthcare research, development and innovation, the UK is home to some of the world’s most distinguished scientists and innovators and Arab Health allowed exhibitors to highlight exactly how their pioneering products are improving healthcare around the world.

Brenmoor from Skipton, UK, who are the leading manufacturers of printed wristbands and labels, enjoyed great success at the exhibition. Showcasing at Arab Health for the first time, the company signed an order on the second day of the show for 100,000 wristbands and are now looking to roll out patient identification across the Middle East.

Paul Brennan of Brenmoor, said:

“Arab Health was the ideal platform for us to exhibit wristbands which have been designed to stop patients being wrongly identified and mismatched whilst they are in hospital care. There is an urgent need to reduce identification errors in the vast majority of hospitals throughout the world and we believe that printed identification bands will provide that solution, ensuring the right patient gets the right care.
“We are already in advanced discussions with a number of companies from across the Middle East who are eager to supply our wristbands to hospitals across the region.”

The UK is a world leader in healthcare research, development and innovation and is home to some of the world’s most distinguished scientists and innovators. The UK medical technology sector consists of 2771 companies generating £10.6bn of turnover and has a large portion of the world’s most innovative medical technology SME’s, multinationals and leading R&D centres.

The tag has been designed to be printed inside blood banks and matches the blood component with the patient to aide a smooth transfusion. It is fully printable with barcodes and text. The whole of the large printable area is left completely blank so that each hospital or department can produce a template that is unique to their own method of working.

If required the tag has three sections that are quickly removed by tearing a perforation so details of the transfusion can be sent back to the lab and recorded. In addition the back of any of the removable sections that are used can be peeled away and turned into a label which is then easily applied to patient notes.

Once printed, the text and barcodes are completely resistant to alcohol, soaps, water and bodily fluids.
The tag is secured in place by first feeding the thin section through the bag and then peeling away a tab which exposes an adhesive and is then fixed on the reverse of the printable section.

Each tag is supplied on rolls of 100 and uses the same proven technology that Brenmoor successfully rely on when supplying the 7 out of 10 UK hospitals which currently print wristbands with patient details.

As with the full range of Brenmoor wristbands they are designed for use in most thermal transfer printers including Zebra 2844, G-Series and in addition TEC, Citizen, Maxatech and Intermec.

Providing a cost effective but high quality solution, Brenmoor’s Blood Tag can be used to ensure that the contents of any fluid bag are safely and properly identified.

Every day throughout the world thousands of hospital patients are victims of identification breakdowns and errors of various degrees. This can result in major problems with transfusion, drug administering, specimen collection and point of care testing.

Providing a cost effective but high quality solution, Brenmoor’s identification band contains a barcode, the patients name and their date of birth and can help reduce identification errors.

They have been designed following consultation with healthcare staff and have been approved by the National Patient Safety Agency for distribution through NHS Supply Chain.

The bands are easy to print, extremely comfortable for the patient and are resistant to soaps, alcohol, water and other commonly used chemicals used in hospitals.

There are a wide range of ID bracelets available including those for general patient use, short to medium term stays in hospital and ones specially designed for children.

Brenmoor is the only British and European manufacturer and supplier of printable wristbands to the NHS and is keen to introduce their pioneering range of wristbands and bracelets into new global markets.

The company is attending Arab Health 2010 in January (Dubai) and will use the exhibition as a platform to raise awareness and promote the benefits of printed ID bracelets, as well as meeting new potential business partners from across the Middle East.

Paul Brennan of Brenmoor says:

“Between February 2006 and January 2007, the National Patient Safety Agency Advice in the UK received over 24,000 reports of patients being wrongly identified and mismatched with their care. This can be distressing for patients and for staff and can result in serious, lasting harm, such as chronic pain, undiagnosed cancers, blindness and even death. There is an urgent need to reduce identification errors in the vast majority of hospitals throughout the world and we believe that printed identification bands will provide that solution, ensuring the right patient gets the right care.”

Arab Health is the largest medical technologies fair in the world and will be taking place between 25-28 January 2010. Throughout the show Brenmoor will be looking for potential new partners to represent them within the UAE and will be located on the UK Pavilion in hall 7.

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The NPSA made a set of statistics available recently to E-Health Insider showing that only 70% of NHS trusts that were required to comply with a Safer Practice Notice have done so.

According to the statistics, 25% of trusts have “ongoing actions” in relation to the wristbands and a further 5% are “assessing the relevance” or “taking no action since acknowledgment.”

The Safer Practice Notice Alert requiring NHS organisations in England and Wales to standardise and print patient wristbands was issued in March of 2007 it was recommended that this should be done at the patient bedside “where possible.”

The alert said that over a one year period, more than 24,382 patients received the wrong care and at least 2,900 of these related to poorly written wristbands and their use.

It said:

“The new design of patient wristbands, the information on them, and the processes used to produce and check them will improve patient safety.”

The notice said all inpatients in general acute and community settings should have printed wristbands by 18 July 2009.

The patient safety notice now states that:

“Although the deadline for actions has passed, this guidance remains best practice. It should be followed to prevent future patient safety incidents.”

Although the NPSA monitors compliance with its guidelines, it does not have the power to enforce their implementation. The Care Quality Commission investigates compliance as part of its annual assessments. A spokesperson for the CQC said: “Every year the CQC assesses compliance against core standards including patient safety. Because the deadline for the printed patient wristbands was July 2009, it has missed this year’s annual review.

“It could be something that we could use to check compliance with the relevant core standard within the 2009-10 assessments.”

For more on this see the E-Health Insider article.