Safe storage of medical products

Vac­cines, bio­log­i­cal sam­ples, med­ica­tions and the like usu­al­ly need to be stored refrig­er­at­ed to pre­vent spoilage. An inter­rup­tion in the refrig­er­a­tion cycle, which can be caused by a mal­func­tion of a med­ical refrig­er­a­tion unit, for exam­ple, often means sig­nif­i­cant finan­cial loss­es, short­ages of vac­cines and blood sup­plies, or weeks of lost work time. Due to the denat­u­ra­tion of the mol­e­cules that make them up, bio­log­i­cal sam­ples can be irre­triev­ably lost if exposed to inap­pro­pri­ate tem­per­a­tures, ren­der­ing them unus­able for use in a clin­i­cal or research set­ting. For this rea­son, real-time dig­i­tal mon­i­tor­ing solu­tions are always rec­om­mend­ed. Depend­ing on the usage sce­nario and the med­ical cool­ing device used, there are dif­fer­ent solu­tions for real-time monitoring.

For a long time, paper tem­per­a­ture recorders were the only way to mon­i­tor cool­ing equip­ment. How­ev­er, the bulky and in the long run expen­sive paper tem­per­a­ture recorders should be replaced, as they need to be replaced reg­u­lar­ly and do not trans­mit data, so remote mon­i­tor­ing of med­ical cool­ing equip­ment is not pos­si­ble with them. Instead, dig­i­tal solu­tions for mon­i­tor­ing are a safer and over­all bet­ter option, includ­ing in terms of total cost of ownership.

Digital solutions offer numerous advantages

Some mod­ern med­ical refrig­er­a­tion equip­ment comes with built-in mon­i­tor­ing soft­ware, depend­ing on the man­u­fac­tur­er. To be mon­i­tored remote­ly, these units are sim­ply con­nect­ed via a cable (e.g., RJ-45) to the local net­work and thus to the mon­i­tor­ing soft­ware. Once con­nect­ed, the soft­ware of these prod­ucts col­lects the data sent by the cool­ing devices, dis­plays them clear­ly and rais­es an alarm and/or sends an SMS (and also emails) in case of emer­gency. More­over, this soft­ware can mon­i­tor sev­er­al hun­dred devices in real time, so this method is the eas­i­est to imple­ment, as it does not require addi­tion­al exter­nal devices.

How­ev­er, not every med­ical cool­ing device is equipped with a suit­able port (e.g. RJ-45). For exam­ple, some mod­els only have an RS485 port. In addi­tion, devices from dif­fer­ent man­u­fac­tur­ers are some­times used in health­care facil­i­ties. For sce­nar­ios with devices with­out a suit­able con­nec­tion or with devices from dif­fer­ent man­u­fac­tur­ers, there is no way around an exter­nal con­nec­tion to con­nect the devices used with mon­i­tor­ing soft­ware. B Med­ical Sys­tems, for exam­ple, offers the Data Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Unit (DCU), which can con­nect up to ten devices with its own mon­i­tor­ing soft­ware, depend­ing on the type of cool­ing unit. A pre­req­ui­site for this, how­ev­er, is that the med­ical cool­ing devices are equipped with a PT1000 tem­per­a­ture sen­sor, if this is not already installed in the device. Exist­ing devices can be retro­fit­ted so that no new devices need to be pur­chased. This is there­fore an inter­est­ing option for intro­duc­ing real-time mon­i­tor­ing, espe­cial­ly for small­er facilities.

In rur­al or remote areas (such as many devel­op­ing coun­tries), the solu­tions pre­sent­ed above often reach their lim­its because the nec­es­sary infra­struc­ture is not avail­able. For this sce­nario, a real-time mon­i­tor­ing device, such as the Remote Tem­per­a­ture Mon­i­tor­ing Device (RTMD) from B Med­ical Sys­tems, is rec­om­mend­ed. The device con­nects to a med­ical cool­ing device and col­lects the data. Thanks to an inte­grat­ed SIM card, the col­lect­ed data is then trans­mit­ted in real time when the device is with­in range of a 2G/3G net­work. If the tem­per­a­ture of a cool­ing device equipped with an RTMD changes out­side the set para­me­ters, the mon­i­tor­ing solu­tion sends an alarm via SMS and/or e‑mail.

Var­i­ous man­u­fac­tur­ers offer suit­able solu­tions for real-time mon­i­tor­ing of the entire cold chain. It is impor­tant for cus­tomers to think about real-time mon­i­tor­ing dur­ing the pur­chas­ing process and to dis­cuss their appli­ca­tion sce­nario with the sup­pli­er in order to find the right solu­tion togeth­er. The soft­ware should clear­ly dis­play the col­lect­ed data in a dash­board and auto­mat­i­cal­ly send an alarm via SMS or e‑mail if there are any devi­a­tions from the spec­i­fi­ca­tions. In this way, the risk of stored sam­ples, blood sup­plies or vac­cines spoil­ing can be minimized.