With short expiration dates, high-cost biologics, drugs, and vaccines often need to be refrigerated at specific temperature ranges – a vitally important yet often overlooked issue. Many biologics, particularly vaccines, are vulnerable to temperature changes and may lose their effectiveness when exposed to inappropriate temperatures. Items that biodegrade over time are also susceptible to integrity loss when stored above the recommended temperature ranges. This can result in ineffective prescriptions and vaccines, wastage of expensive drugs, and contaminated data results. Other potential threats include water leaks, intrusion, theft, power outages, and human error, such as accidentally leaving a fridge door ajar. Thus, a crucial part of ensuring the integrity and effectiveness of biologics, drugs, and vaccines lies in identifying and monitoring environmental threats in pharmacies, medical offices, hospitals, and laboratories, which enable prompt response to detected dangers before they escalate.
Stay up to date on environmental situations in pharmaceutical, medical and scientific cold storage sites with fully scalable ENVIROMUX® Environment Monitoring Systems. Receive alert notifications via web interface, email, SMS messages, SNMP, voice phone calls, alarm beacon, and sirens to ensure threats are quickly resolved. The environmental monitoring systems can also activate outlets and alarms using output relay switches, such as turning on additional air conditioning when temperature rises. Schedule alerts according to each personnel's shift to minimize emergency response times. A single point monitoring software supports up to 3,000 monitoring systems, allowing smooth upscaling for any enterprise level.
Applications | Products |
---|---|
Basic Applications | E-1W, E-MICRO, E-MINI-LXO |
Intermediate Applications | E-2D, E-5D |
Large Enterprise Applications | E-16D |
Place temperature sensors in fridges, freezers, cabinets, and air conditioning system vents to monitor temperatures for sensitive biologics. Incorrect temperature ranges can cause degradation of the biologics' integrity, which may result in less effective drugs, wastage, and contaminated data results. Prevent prolonged temperature fluctuations by catching anomalies before they escalate.
When using a glycol temperature sensor, readings represent the temperature of the refrigerator/freezer's contents rather than the ambient air temperature. It buffers any momentary fluctuations that may cause false alarms, such as doors opening, defrost cycles and fans circulating air.
High humidity causes condensation and fungal growth, which can contaminate biologics, cause electrical shorts in circuits or circuit breakers, and damage equipment that are crucial to maintaining correct temperature ranges.
Rope-style, spot, tape-style, and under carpet leak detectors monitor for damaging water leaks and other conductive fluids that might threaten the equipment holding biologics. Water sensors should be placed on the floor, in air conditioning drip pans, and underneath fridges, freezers, pipe junctions, and ventilation systems.
Monitor continuous air flow in an HVAC duct. Insufficient air flow can be caused by many factors such as a malfunctioning fan, increased friction, or physical blockage.
Monitoring for developing smoke is essential in the security and safety of any facility, especially when there are heat-sensitive biologics close by. Smoke sensors help detect the initial signs of component fires to ensure quick responses to fire hazards.
Keypads, electric door strikes, and door contact sensors restrict and monitor access of key entry places to prevent unwanted intrusion and detect theft. They can also be used to send alerts when fridge or freezer doors have been accidentally left ajar. Outdoor and indoor motion sensors detect and/or monitor presence for unauthorized access and intrusions.
Detect the presence or absence of line voltage and monitor voltage, frequency, power, brownouts and current of onsite power generators, power lines, battery banks or solar panels. Any disruption in power that leads to temperature fluctuations can cause costly damage. Power relays can be used to control or activate equipment such as HVAC and cooling systems based on alerts or an as-needed basis.
Use IP surveillance cameras to visually inspect enterprise assets and resources via a browser from anywhere in the world. Real-time surveillance can track personnel entry at keypads and allow a first-hand look at important locations when an alarm goes off for quick assessment of threats.