Both Hospital & Medical refrigerator temperature monitoring is critical to ensure the correct storage of temperature-sensitive medical and pharmaceutical products. The CDC have reported that 35% of vaccines are discarded due to improper refrigeration. The main culprit to this issue is the fact that medical staff are not made aware fast enough of refrigerator malfunction and therefore medical assets are thrown out.
Medical facilities, including medical clinics, hospitals, pharmacies and laboratories, often have numerous refrigerators throughout their facilities that require daily temperature checks. The CDC recommends recording refrigerator temperatures twice daily, which for a large scale facility presents a time-consuming and highly inefficient operation when manually recording refrigerator temperature data.
The solution to reducing the risk of losing temperature-sensitive medications and saving time for medical staff is implementing an automated sensor-based refrigerator temperature monitoring system.
In this article we will address the following:
- The importance of refrigerator temperature monitoring in medical and healthcare settings
- The recommended features that a medical refrigerator temperature monitoring system should have
- How you can effectively implement a medical refrigeration monitoring system at your facility with Operandio
Importance of Refrigerator Temperature Monitoring in Medical Settings
The importance of maintaining and monitoring accurate refrigeration temperatures is imperative, for both compliance reasons and the protection of temperature-sensitive medical products. For these reasons, continuous temperature monitoring is required, as maintaining the appropriate temperature for various medications and other pharmaceutical products ensures that their potency and clinical efficacy is maintained.
Difficulties in Maintaining Refrigerator Temperatures in Medical Settings
Maintaining the appropriate refrigerator temperature in any medical setting has its challenges and is dependent upon various factors, such as:
- Medical staff and personnel training;
- Inventory management and;
- Most importantly, the appropriate refrigerator temperature monitoring system.
Training staff correctly and having accurate inventory management are imperative to successfully ensure the appropriate storage of temperature-sensitive medical products. Choosing a suitable temperature monitoring system for a facility’s refrigerated equipment should have important key features to ensure an efficient and effective temperature monitoring system is in place.
Read on to find out what these recommended features are.
Recommended Features of Medical Temperature Monitoring Systems
Modern technology has allowed for both efficient and effective medical refrigerator temperature monitoring systems to now be used in medical and healthcare settings. Both increased staff efficiency and increased protection of temperature-sensitive medical assets results in more money being saved for business owners, thanks to this new monitoring technology. In order to achieve these outcomes the following features are recommended:
Real-Time Alert Notifications
Temperature-sensitive medications are prone to deterioration at the slightest altercation in refrigerator temperature. In the event of a temperature change, an alert in real-time is sent to the appropriate staff member to notify this change and action can be taken immediately. This prevents the loss of costly and often irreplaceable medical products from being discarded.
Continuous 24/7 Monitoring
Although the recommended twice daily temperature logging requirements in medical facilities will suffice, often temperatures fluctuate throughout the day from staff opening and closing fridges to administer different medications to patients. These temperature fluctuations are missed and therefore not recorded as part of the twice daily checks. With continuous 24/7 monitoring, refrigerator temperature fluctuations can be recorded and this data can then be analyzed further to identify trends in equipment performance and health. Also, more importantly, should a problem arise with a certain medication that was administered at a specific time and date, the data can easily be retrieved and shown to the required personnel to check if refrigerator temperature fluctuations were a contributing factor.
Automated Data Collection & Reporting
All the data that is collected by the temperature-recording device should be automatically synced to a web-based application. This allows users to access all temperature data from anywhere, which can then be used for reporting and analysis purposes. The need for medical staff to manually check each refrigerator temperature and physically record data is no longer required, allowing them to focus on more important duties, like their patients.
Therefore, by ensuring these key features are a part of your medical refrigerator temperature monitoring system, you will benefit from improved staff efficiency, prevent the loss or damage to sensitive and expensive medical assets, which will ultimately save your medical business time and money.
How to Effectively Monitor your Medical Refrigerator Temperature?
Temperature monitoring best practices for temperature-sensitive medical and pharmaceutical products can be achieved with Operandio’s intelligent remote sensor temperature monitoring system. All these features discussed above are included in Operandio’s platform and are made possible thanks to the smart sensor and the Operandio app.
To effectively monitor your medical refrigerator temperature, all you need to do is simply install the sensor into your preferred location and download the app onto your mobile or tablet device.
Once the sensor is activated, you can customize your temperature ranges via the app and all your temperature data will start recording and automatically sync to your phone or tablet.
If you’re ready to improve staff efficiency at your hospital, protect your temperature-sensitive medical products and save money at your medical facility, then you can book a free demo with Operandio today.
