Learning Objectives for this Presentation:
By the end of the presentation participants should be able to:
1. Understand how cost-effective technology can be used to automatically monitor and record refrigerated vaccine temperatures, provide immediate Internet access to current and historical vaccine temperature data, and alert responsible personnel via e-mail/pager when temperatures are out-of-range
2. Realize cost savings and increase confidence in proper vaccine storage by detecting and reducing the duration of out-of-range incidents, and using data to assess their impact on vaccine efficacy


Background:
Recently there have been several well-publicized incidents of vaccines stored at incorrect temperatures administered to thousands of clients before clinic staff became aware of the problem. The time and expense of replacing vaccine, identifying and notifying affected clients, and re-vaccination was considerable.
Laboratory grade refrigerators provide more reliable temperature control, but are much more expensive than refrigerators commonly used in clinics, don't record temperatures in machine-readable form so they can be viewed or searched remotely, and lack the ability to automatically notify clinic staff and supervisors when temperatures are out-of-range.


Objectives:
Create an inexpensive system (accessible via web browser) to automatically monitor and record vaccine temperatures using existing refrigerators at clinics. In addition to maintaining historical data from refrigerators, the system provides immediate e-mail/pager alerts to notify clinic staff and supervisors when refrigerators are out-of-range. This permits corrective action to be taken and provides data on the length and frequency of out-of-range conditions.

Methods:
Use readily available wireless, database, and Internet technology along with custom scripts and software to build the system.

Results:
The system has been implemented and demonstrated. We are seeking partners to do a deployment in clinics to demonstrate the system's utility in a real-world environment, gaining operational experience and data.

Conclusions:
There is a flexible, cost-effective solution for vaccine temperature monitoring which can be used with existing vaccine refrigerators at clinics.