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By Sabine Kelly | Feb.17, 2026
Better Every Day: How We Can Empower Healthcare’s Frontline Workers
I recently had the privilege of joining a host of industry leaders and innovators at the 40th GS1 Global Healthcare Summit. The energy at the conference felt distinct. In every session and conversation, a shared purpose resonated: to tackle the immense pressures on our healthcare systems not as individual organizations, but as a connected ecosystem.
The experience crystallized a belief we hold at Zebra Technologies. Companies equipping their frontline workers for this new, digitized, and automated reality will define the future of patient care.
Following the event, I sat down with my colleague, Oliver Ledgard, to record a podcast episode, and I want to share some highlights of that discussion with you. It explored the very real friction points clinicians and support staff encounter daily and how a new vision for healthcare operations can make a tangible difference.
Seeing the Forest for the Trees
Anyone working in or near a hospital today understands the challenges. We see dedicated staff grappling with immense administrative burdens, all while navigating a persistent labor crisis. We see fragmented systems creating frustrating delays in locating critical equipment and supplies.
During the podcast, Oliver and I discussed how these inefficiencies directly impact what matters most: patient safety and staff satisfaction. The need for trusted, standardized, consumable data on every device has never felt more urgent, especially with increasing regulatory pressures.
These hurdles, however, also present opportunities for meaningful improvement. By focusing on the operational workflows, we can begin to clear the path for caregivers to do what they do best: care for patients.
Powering the Connected Frontline
We believe the future of healthcare lies in a connected frontline, where technology empowers people with the right information at the right time. Consider the vital process of medication administration. In a day filled with countless critical moments, a nurse’s highest priority is ensuring the "five rights": right patient, right drug, right time, right dose, and right route.
When a nurse uses a mobile device to scan the barcode on a patient’s wristband and then the barcode on the medication, the system instantly validates that information against the electronic health record (EHR). This simple, automated action closes the loop on patient safety. It provides real-time guidance that protects patients and allows the nurse to proceed with confidence, focusing on the person, not the process.
Making the Invisible, Visible
This principle of real-time visibility extends far beyond the patient’s bedside. In pharmacy departments, for instance, counterfeit drugs pose a growing threat. This is where intelligent automation creates a powerful line of defense.
We highlighted one such solution, developed with one of our partners, NEWAC – a subsidiary of the Softway Medical Group, during our talk. It uses smart camera technology to perform mass scanning of medication bundles as they arrive at the pharmacy.
By reading the unique GS1 DataMatrix codes on each package, the system checks the product’s authenticity against the national medicines database in real time. This digitizes a critical point in the supply chain, turning a once-manual process into an automated safeguard and providing asset visibility that helps secure the entire value chain.
The Proof is in the Outcomes
These concepts become truly powerful when you see the outcomes they produce. At Hull University Teaching Hospital, which serves about a million patients a year across two campuses, staff faced the daily challenge of locating life-sustaining machines. Before implementing a digital materials management solution that leverages barcode and RFID technology, a clinician might spend around 15 minutes per shift searching for a single piece of equipment.
After implementation, that time dropped to just four minutes. If that time savings is applied across 2,500 staff members, it adds up to over 90,000 hours of clinical time returned to the hospital each week, time now dedicated to direct patient care.
Similarly, by implementing an RFID solution to manage medical supplies, a large National Health Service (NHS) teaching hospital in the United Kingdom gained complete visibility of its inventory. This allowed them to understand stock levels, optimize ordering, and share resources more effectively across the hospital. The result? An annual savings of more than $6.8 million USD. These examples show how our vision of frontline operations everywhere being digitized, automated, and intelligent, creates a foundation for intelligent operations that deliver real-world results.
We believe our work each day helps make work better for organizations, their employees, and those they serve. The challenges in healthcare are complex, but by relentlessly pursuing innovation and fostering a leading ecosystem of partners, we can provide the tools for connected collaboration and optimized workflows.
We touched on these examples and much more during our full conversation. To hear the entire discussion and explore how we can work together to make your hospital better every day, we invite you to listen to the complete podcast episode here.
