For vaccines to be effective, they are to be stored within the temperature range recommended by manufacturers [+2°C to +8°C]. Cool-Tel systems monitor and record the temperature of pharmacy fridges, or medicines in transit, across the UK and abroad 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Early warning of potential problems are provided to those responsible, giving peace of mind that precious vaccines and medication are safely stored, said the company.
The alert from the Cool-Tel electronic temperature monitoring system allows a response to the problem. Compared with the traditional minimum/maximum temperature readings taken every 24hours, with Cool-Tel the vaccines can be moved to safety and clinicians can be confident that they remain potent and avoid wastage.
The battery operated Cool-Tel temperature monitor, when placed in any fridge, monitors the temperature at regular intervals, and uses mobile phone technology to upload the data to a secure website where the data is analysed, alerts are raised and audit logs are stored. The technology behind Cool-Tel was supplied by Eseye, a supplier of cellular machine to machine (M2M) solutions, said the company.
Ian Marsden, CTO of Eseye, said: “The M2M+ platform is ideal for battery powered GSM applications such as Cool-Tel. It handles all the communications from the Cool-Tel unit and stores the data securely online. Using Eseye’s AnyNet SIM card inside Cool-Tel means that we have completely avoided the problem of phone coverage black spots, it simply picks whichever network has the best signal.”