White Paper: Technology Options For Healthcare Color Label & Wristband Printing

Color has earned a permanent place in healthcare processes because it has proven to be an effective enhancement to labels, files, forms and wristbands. Selective, appropriate use of color can enhance patient safety by providing an extra visual reminder to differentiate potential lookalike or soundalike medications, highlight dosages, dietary restrictions, allergies and other alerts, and to easily identify specimens to streamline sorting and prioritize processing. Color on files, records, specimen labels, test orders, meal tickets and other documents also supports more efficient workflows.

The value of using color is much more clear than determining the best way to create color. Typically, inexpensive office and consumer printers are slow and do a poor job of handling label and wristband media. Inkjet printers produce outstanding color output, but haven't traditionally been used for labeling, while thermal is a leading label printing technology but can't easily produce color. Laser printers excel at document output, but have limitations that make them inappropriate for precision color and barcode printing. As a result, many healthcare organizations use a variety of preprinted color media with laser and thermal printers. This satisfies color requirements, but provides little flexibility for selective color enhancement, and creates the need to order, store and manage multiple inventories of materials. Quality can also suffer, because consistent registration of the variable information printed in specific pre-printed color fields is unreliable.

This white paper highlights how color is commonly used in healthcare environments, explains the advantages and limitations for each printing and labeling technology for these use cases, and provides guidance to help healthcare organizations decide which technique is best suited to their workflows, user needs and IT environment.