When transferring vaccines from one location to another, a key factor is ensuring the contents within the vaccine transport bag remain in cold chain.
Patients don’t always travel to a GP surgery or hospital to receive vaccinations; these need to be transferred from a pharmacy or store to the patient where they will be administered. This might be in a school, nursing home, community hospital or a prison.
When moving vaccinations, a specialist vaccine transport bag is used to help maintain the required temperature range for as long as possible. To help keep the contents in cold chain, the coolant used in the bag is preconditioned, the vaccine carry bag is never opened during transit and additional insulation is often used to ensure protection of the cold chain.
However, when vaccines are being administered, the container holding the vaccines will need to be opened to access the necessary medicines. If the container has numerous doses within it, it will be repeatedly opened. This is when it can become increasingly difficult to maintain the correct temperature.
CorrMed were keen to find a solution to help users monitor the temperature of the contents within the vaccine transport bag during both the vaccine transport and administration.
The solution: a simple to use battery powered USB temperature data logger.
For the solution to work the device required:
an external probe, to allow the temperature inside the vaccine transport bag to be read, whilst remaining shut.
calibration, to ensure ongoing compliance
CorrMed found local company Signatrol, a business who specialise in the environmental measurement for both the pharmaceutical and food industry, to ensure appropriate temperature, humidity, and data recording.
The device, the Tempmate-M1 USB data logger:
· Is battery-powered
· Easily programmable with an LCD display
· Has a USB plug-in
· Can be set to sample at regular intervals between 10 seconds and 24 hours
· Will store up to 32,000 readings on the device
· Reports, via a PDF report containing both tabular and graphical logs of the data
· There is the option to use the free Tempbase software to individually configure the loggers and carry out detailed data analysis and data management
Click the link for more information on the Tempmate-M1 USB data logger
The CorrMed range of vaccine transport bags can be viewed and purchased online, through the NHS supply chain or via an NHS purchase order.
The CorrMed Porta Thermal Bags have been designed by renowned medical bag designer Brian Arnott here in the UK. They have infection control properties, are comfortable to handle – making transportation easy, durable and infection control compliant with wipe clean materials.
The Sussex Community NHS Foundation Trust have been working with CorrMed, whilst delivering up to 3,000 vaccinations per day, using the CorrMed Porta Thermal 20 & 30 litre vaccine transport bags, coolant and the data logger.
Find out what the Head of Operations at Brighton Vaccination Centre had to say about the CorrMed vaccine transport bags by clicking the link above.