Life Pharmacy Group

Stored temperature-sensitive pharmaceutical products and vaccines rely on strict temperature controls across refrigeration assets.

The pharmacy's existing monitoring system had devices inside the refrigeration units that communicated over Wi-Fi to a gateway, which passed the data on to a cloud-based platform. Because the gateway needed both power and an internet connection, the system was subject to fail in a power outage, losing critical temperature data for the whole outage period. With communications and data lost, it could not raise alerts or alarms if product temperatures were breached.

Strive for 5 guidelines require pharmacies to measure product temperatures at least twice daily. That works during trading hours. But if data is unrecoverable after an outage, and the pharmacy cannot prove that a temperature breach did not occur overnight, it has no option but to discard the product, which can lead to a hefty insurance claim or a significant financial loss.

Through our relationship with Gold Cross, we were given the opportunity to run a proof-of-concept project with the Life Pharmacy team to demonstrate the effectiveness of our IoT Cold Chain Management Solution.

The solution is a cloud-based software platform that pairs with our onboard, rechargeable battery-powered Gen3 IoT device to comprehensively monitor product temperatures, ensuring product safety and providing operational and equipment insights.

Because highly sensitive pharmaceutical and vaccine products demand accuracy, all of our devices are calibrated to NATA standards before shipment. Device calibration is also supported by over-the-air (OTA) calibration updates.

The Gen3 IoT device is stand-alone and simple to install, with no cables. It connects directly to widely available NB-IoT / Cat-M1 cellular networks for consistent connectivity, so it does not rely on local Wi-Fi or internet access. We partner with Telstra, Optus and Vodafone to provide reliable, low-cost IoT data services for our customers.

Our cloud platform and free mobile application are comprehensive and simple to use. From the main dashboard, staff can see the temperature status of their products and assets at a glance, through a simple traffic-light system.

Users can drill down into each asset for temperature charts, alerts, alarms and corrective actions. Alerts and alarms are customised to each store, and do not raise unwanted false alerts from sudden temperature shocks when the refrigerator is loaded or unloaded.

Beyond temperature monitoring, the solution keeps an eye on the refrigeration assets themselves and provides operational insights such as door openings and set-point deviations. Our proprietary algorithms build an understanding of each piece of refrigeration equipment and can identify and alert to anomalies, such as equipment failures and defrost changes, before they occur.

Customers can also create unlimited digital forms, moving away from paper-based records and digitising their operations.