The most successful Scan4Safety implementations begin with a clear understanding of the organisation’s current position. This page provides tools and guidance to help you assess your baseline, identify where scanning would deliver greatest value, and build a compelling case for investment.
Pre-implementation assessment framework
Use the points in the framework below to evaluate your current position across seven key areas. For each area, consider the patient impact, financial cost, and staff resource implications of your current situation.
Patient identification errors
- How frequently are patients misidentified in your organisation?
- What systems exist to verify patient identity at the point of care?
- What is the potential consequence of a patient identification error in your highest-risk clinical areas?
Product recall response
- How long does it currently take to identify all patients who received a recalled product?
- How confident are you in the completeness of your recall response?
- What manual processes are involved in managing a recall?
Implant and medical device traceability
- How are surgical implants currently recorded and linked to patients?
- How complete is your data submission to the Medical Device Outcomes Registry?
- Could you rapidly identify all patients who received a specific device if a safety concern arose?
Clinical time on manual tasks
- How much time do clinical and support staff spend on manual documentation, stock checks, and ordering?
- What is the impact of this administrative burden on time available for direct patient care?
Inventory visibility
- What is your current level of stock wastage from expired or unused items?
- How frequently are procedures cancelled or delayed due to stock unavailability?
- What is your estimated value of excess shelf stock?
National registry data quality
- What proportion of required MDOR submissions are completed accurately and on time?
- What manual processes support data submission, and what are the error risks?
Patient safety incidents
- Reviewing your incident data, which categories of harm could Sacn4Safety help prevent?
- Are there patterns in your incidents that suggest systematic identification or tracking failures?
- Where would Scan4Safety have the biggest impact on reducing patient safety incidents, based on frequency, level of harm, impact on patients, and associated financial costs?
Using the assessment framework
Trusts should gather baseline data for each area, involve clinical, operational, and finance teams in the evaluation, and use the findings to prioritise areas where Scan4Safety would deliver greatest value.
Completing this assessment helps organisations articulate specific safety and quality challenges, identify where Scan4Safety would deliver greatest value, build clinical engagement through evidence-based prioritisation, and develop targeted implementation plans focused on highest-impact areas.
The assessment also establishes the baseline metrics against which improvement will be measured after implementation. It is important that the development of measures happens early and not after implementation – visit the Measuring impact and benefits page for more details on how to do this.
Building the business case
The assessment work described on this page also strengthens the business case for Scan4Safety. A business case built on local data — your organisation’s incident rates, recall response times, stock wastage figures, and staff time spent on manual processes — is more compelling to decision-makers than one based on national evidence alone.
It demonstrates that you understand the specific problem you are solving, not just the general case for the technology. Organisations that invest in this groundwork tend to secure stronger executive support, set more realistic expectations, and find it easier to demonstrate return on investment once implementation begins.
We recommend including the following principles:
- Ground the case in patient safety. The primary case for Scan4Safety is patient safety. Financial and operational benefits are real and significant, but organisations that lead with safety tend to achieve stronger clinical engagement and more sustained adoption.
- Use local data where possible. National evidence provides a powerful baseline, but local data about your organisation’s specific challenges — incident rates, recall response times, stock wastage — makes the case more compelling for local decision-makers.
- Be honest about costs. A credible business case includes realistic estimates of technology and infrastructure costs, implementation resource requirements, training and change management investment, and ongoing maintenance and support. NHS Supply Chain pilot data suggests a five-to-one return on investment, but this requires investment in the foundations to be realised.
- Present a phased approach. A business case that proposes starting with a contained pilot, demonstrating value, and then expanding is more likely to secure approval than one that proposes immediate organisation-wide deployment.
- Link to organisational and national priorities. Connect Scan4Safety to your organisation’s quality improvement strategy, digital transformation plans, and mandatory compliance requirements. Alignment with the NHS 10-Year Plan, NHS Quality Strategy, Patient Safety Strategy, and MDOR requirements strengthens the case.
Cost-benefit summary from NHS demonstrator sites:
- Technology and infrastructure investment is offset by automation of data capture, saving thousands of clinical hours annually
- Derby Teaching Hospitals saved £451,000 annually through improved stock management
- Plymouth Hospitals saved £72,000 in orthopaedics alone
- Leeds Teaching Hospitals reduced recall patient identification time from 8.33 days to under 35 minutes, saving £84,000 in administrative costs annually
In addition, under the NHS Supply Chain IMS pilot, the top three trusts for benefit realisation were Northumbria (£700,517), Rotherham (£530,627), and Newcastle (£412,636) — demonstrating the scale of potential returns.