Hospitals today only capture and document around 48% of implants and consumables used during procedures.
The result? Billions of dollars in lost reimbursements and supply chain blind spots.
The reason is simple: barcodes.
While hospital technology has evolved, barcode-based data capture hasn’t kept pace with modern needs. In fact, it’s one of the main reasons why hospitals can’t achieve complete, real-time documentation.
This video highlights 6 reasons to break free from barcodes in the OR and then read what hospitals can do to finally capture every item used, automatically and accurately.
1. Barcodes Cause Hospitals to Lose Money
Every unscanned item means lost revenue.
When even one implant or high-cost consumable isn’t documented, it can’t be billed or reimbursed.
The issue isn’t just human error — it’s workflow. In busy operating rooms, barcode scanning takes time and often gets skipped.
Many hospitals ask, “Isn’t barcode scanning supposed to prevent errors?”
It is — but only if every item is properly labeled, scannable, and read correctly, which rarely happens in real-life clinical settings.
AI image recognition, like Snap&Go, captures product data instantly, ensuring that every single item is documented automatically.
2. Too Many Barcodes, Not Enough Time
Most medical device packages include multiple barcodes from manufacturers, distributors, and even internal hospital systems.
Nurses must guess which one to scan, often wasting valuable time or scanning the wrong one.
In fast-moving surgical workflows, this manual process slows teams down and results in incomplete usage reporting.
Snap&Go removes that burden. With a single photo, it identifies the product, catalog number, and all regulatory data — no scanning or searching required.
3. Barcodes Are Incomplete by Design
A barcode typically contains only a catalog number, not the batch number, serial number, or expiration date required for FDA UDI compliance.
That means more manual steps for clinical staff — typing, checking, verifying — just to complete the record.
With computer vision, hospitals can finally capture all relevant information directly from the package — UDI, lot, serial, and expiration — automatically and accurately.
No missing data. No manual entry.
4. No Standardization = More Internal Work
Every manufacturer uses a different barcode structure, leaving hospitals struggling to make sense of inconsistent formats.
This forces supply chain teams to create internal labels and custom scanning rules, adding unnecessary complexity.
Barcodes also change frequently when packaging updates or suppliers switch.
Hospitals often ask, “How do we keep up with these constant changes?”
The answer: stop chasing codes.
AI image recognition identifies products by sight, not by a label format. Snap&Go recognizes the item itself, even if the barcode or packaging changes — making your documentation future-proof.
5. Not All Items Can Be Tagged
Barcodes only work when a product has one. Many items in the OR — small consumables, repackaged products, or trays — simply don’t have barcodes.
Those items are invisible to traditional tracking systems, meaning they can’t be charged, traced, or included in reports.
With image recognition, every item is visible. Snap&Go identifies both barcoded and non-barcoded products, ensuring complete point-of-use visibility for inventory, compliance, and billing.
6. Barcodes Keep Changing
Barcodes evolve constantly — new suppliers, new versions, new packaging.
Hospitals must manually update mappings in their systems to match “old vs. new” identifiers, which leads to documentation gaps and charge capture errors.
By contrast, AI-based image recognition learns and adapts automatically.
Snap&Go recognizes products by their printed details and physical appearance — so your hospital never needs to chase barcode updates again.
Why Hospitals Are Moving to Image Recognition
Healthcare supply chains need real-time, reliable data, and not partial snapshots. Barcodes were designed for warehouses, not operating rooms.
AI-powered image recognition finally closes the data gap, delivering:
- 100% item-level visibility
- Instant, automatic documentation
- Full UDI compliance
- Improved charge capture and reimbursement
- Time savings for nurses and supply chain staff
It’s Time to Break Free from Barcodes
Hospitals deserve better than partial data and manual scanning.
With Snap&Go, every product used in the OR is documented automatically — no barcodes, no scanning, no missed revenue.
