Temperature monitoring is a critical requirement in various industrial settings, this is especially important in the pharmaceutical sector when various medicines require storage at set temperatures for preservation. Here Ian Loudon, international sales and marketing manager at alarm annunciator specialist Omniflex, explores the importance of alarm annunciators in monitoring the temperature in pharmaceutical and laboratory environments.
Omniflex
The use of IoT Technology in the era of Industry 4.0 is widespread, so the benefits of remote monitoring key assets are more compelling than ever. It provides laboratory managers, pharmaceutical manufacturers and distributors with a convenient and cost-effective way of managing system performance.
In hospitals and clinical environments globally, cryopreservation units are used to store everything from human tissue samples to blood and bone marrow. In these applications, managing the temperature of storage facilities is paramount, and continuous monitoring is essential to managing sample and medication storage.
Therefore, it is an increasingly important requirement for lab managers to validate the cold chain of all materials with specific temperature storing requirements. Famously, the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine had very strict temperature requirements for long-term storage and transportation.
Ensuring that medications are stored at the right temperature means that they can preserve chemical integrity – meaning that active ingredients won’t degrade or decay. This helps protect the patient from any unintended side effects and preserves any medication’s effectiveness.
Good monitoring systems allow any potential problems to be quickly identified, allowing them to be rectified and ultimately preserving the medication, helping save money from any waste that may otherwise be incurred.
Alarm annunciators with built-in remote monitoring provide lab managers with the most cost-effective means of validating freezer system performance. They do this by being hardwired directly into the monitored processes, in this case the cryofreezers in labs, so there is no risk of network failures that impede the alarm’s performance.
In the event of the temperature deviating outside of normal limits, the relevant panel on the annunciator lights up and an alarm sounds, sending a clear signal to all nearby personnel that the freezer is in an abnormal state.
Built-in remote monitoring technology also enables text and email alerts to be sent to relevant personnel, such as lab managers and maintenance technicians, so they can act quickly to protect research samples. This prevents the previously common occurrence of systems failing overnight only to be discovered the following working day when the damage is already done.
Alarms are sent to key personnel via text message, email and even pop-up alarm messaging on a computer. Alarms are managed using duty schedules preprogrammed into the system to ensure off duty personnel are not bothered. Alarm recipients must acknowledge the alarm within reasonable time periods otherwise the alarm is escalated to another group of recipients for action.
There are three escalation groups. Often the facility will have 24/7 security who can also be mobilised to action in the event of alarms. These techniques help mitigate the risk of alarms being overlooked or missed.
Omniflex has worked with research labs, such as at Oxford University and South Africa’s Medical Research Council, to install this technology and help lab managers overcome challenges with cryopreservation and have long-term confidence in the cold chain for their stored materials.