IoT Cold Chain Management Solution
Pharmacy Guild’s 2022 Pharmacy of the year winners Cooleman Court Pharmacy, a division of Life Pharmacy Group, are continually reviewing ways to improve their service and ensure the safety, efficacy and quality of products they supply their customers.
The Challenge
Due to the gateway requiring power, as well as the internet connection, the system was subject to fail in the event of a power outage, losing critical temperature data over the outage period. Due to the loss of communications and data, the solution did not provide alerts and alarms if product temperatures were breached within the refrigeration units.
Strive for 5 guidelines requires pharmacies to measure their product temperatures a minimum twice daily. This strategy works well during trading hours, but what happens when the pharmacy is closed? If the data is unrecoverable due to an outage, and the pharmacy cannot prove that a product temperature breach didn’t occur during the evening, the pharmacy has no option but to discard the product, which could lead to a hefty insurance claim or significant financial loss.
Our Solution
Through our relationship with the Gold Cross, we were given the opportunity to provide a proof of concept (POC) project with Life Pharmacy team, to demonstrate the effectiveness of our IoT Cold Chain Management Solution.
The CT IoT Cold Chain Management Solution is a cloud-based software platform that pairs with our latest onboard (rechargeable) battery-powered Gen3 IoT device, to comprehensively monitor product temperatures, ensuring product safety, as well as providing operational and equipment insights.
Understanding the requisite accuracy required to monitor highly sensitive pharmaceutical and vaccine products, all of our devices are calibrated to NATA standards before shipment.
Device Calibration services are also supported by Over-The-Air (OTA) calibration updates.
Gen3 IoT device
The Gen3 IoT device is stand alone, simple to install (no cables), and is designed to connect directly to widely available (NB-IoT/CatM1) cellular networks, providing consistent connectivity. We partner with Telstra, Optus and Vodafone to provide the best connectivity and lowest cost IoT data services for our customers. This method of connectivity does not rely on the local intermittent Wi-Fi signal or internet access.
Easy to Use
Our CT Cloud-based platform and free mobile application are highly comprehensive and simple to use. From the main dashboard, users can easily see the temperature status of their products and assets, via a simple traffic light system.
Detailed Views & Customisation
Users can drill down into assets for a more detailed view, providing temperature charts, alerts, alarms and corrective actions.
Alerts and alarms can be customised to meet the needs of your store, and do not suffer from unwanted false alerts due to sudden temperature shocks when loading and unloading the refrigerator.
In-built Software Analytics
Beyond comprehensive temperature monitoring, CT customers benefit from our in-built software analytics. Our Cold Chain Management solution not only watches over your product temperatures, but also keeps an eye on your refrigeration assets, and provides operational insights. These include things such as door openings and temperature setpoint deviations.
CT’s proprietary algorithms build an understanding of your refrigeration equipment and can identify and alert to anomalies, such as equipment failures and defrost changes, before they occur.
With customers continually striving for business improvements, the Cold Chain Management solution offers the ability to create unlimited digital forms, allowing customers to move away from paper-based forms and digitize their operations.
Transformation
- Increased security over stored refrigerated pharmaceutical products, knowing that the solution is watching over these valuable assets
- Ability to digitize strive for 5 compliance requirements makes reporting easier
- Any alerts are captured providing the team time to take corrective actions and mitigate losses