Swipe Card: How to create, print and laminate

If you plan to use Arrivals (highly recommended) you may want to use patient cards with barcodes.

Spinalogic makes it very easy to make your own cards. You just print the card out on normal paper, cut it out and laminate it in a credit-card sized pouch. Total cost? About $0.05 each! We recommend you just make them as you need them. It takes about 3 min to do.

Create and Print

In the Patient..Admin record, select Patient Preferences and click the button ‘Create / Print Card…’

Click the big print button. The card will print on A4 and you need to cut out the card after it has printed ready for lamiating.

Laminate

To make these cards, you’ll need a small laminator and the right-sized pouches. You can use a normal large laminator if you have one already but if you want a compact unit at your front desk you’ll see below where to buy one.

If you want to use your own cards, see at the end of this doc.

Laminator

You can use any regular laminator but you might want to get one specifically for ID / Photo use since they are small and may be more convenient if you print a lot of cards.

Laminating Pouches

Australia

Metric: 54×86 mm (credit-card size) 150 micron film

Imperial: 2 1/8” x 3 3/8” – ‘credit-card size’ 5 mil film

I want to use my own cards

Spinalogic can read cards generated by Platinum so if you are moving across from that software, you can just use the cards you already have.

If you want to get credit-card style cards printed, you must get the barcodes made to the following specifications:

1. Barcode type: EAN128
2. Code format: e.g. %2B7E1$
   1. The code must begin with a % and end with a $.
   2. It must be 5 characters long
   3. It can be any hexadecimal number.
   4. Of course they must each be unique!
3. When read, the reader must send a carriage return at the end of the code (as most readers do by default)

Extra Resources

You can also customize the swipe card (although this is not a supported feature).