Challenges

 

Hospitals are required to adhere to stringent temperature monitoring of freezers and refrigerators used to store pharmaceuticals, blood, organs, tissues, food and other items. Regulatory requirements (e.g. FDA, AABB, cGMP) are closely watched by regulatory bodies to ensure patient safety. Many hospitals today use a manual process of checking and recording each refrigeration unit on a daily basis, a time consuming and error prone activity.

 

One of the newest regional medical centers in Louisiana needed to add temperature monitoring to the nearly 200 stand alone refrigerators for pharmaceutical and food storage throughout the 6 Floor facility.

 

The Hospital was virtually completed when the requirement was presented to the system integrator, meaning the addition of network wiring, input / output modules, not to mention thousands of feet of sensor wiring would have been costly and disruptive to the move-in of the hospital staff.

 

 

Solution

 

The system integrator investigated several solutions and turned to Spinwave Systems to supply them with a wireless temperature monitoring system that could be easily deployed and integrated with the existing Building Automation System (BAS).

 

The temperature monitoring system was structured into 6 wireless mesh networks, on per floor. Each mesh network consists of one Receiver/BACnet IP Gateway and a number of SWS-T-EXT battery powered remote probe wireless sensors. The remote thermistor probes were installed inside the refrigerators on all the patient floors on the 3rd through the 6thfloor.

 

The 1st and 2nd floor Networks included sensors for food storage and preparation in freezers and coolers as well.

All of the temperature sensor data is archived on the existing BAS for monitoring, alarming and reporting.

 

Results

 

The wireless temperature monitoring system was installed without disrupting hospital operation.

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The system easily integrated with the existing Building Automation System, using its inherent logging, monitoring, alarming and reporting capabilities and avoiding the cost of a separate isolated solution.

 

The hospital can easily expand the system to monitor additional freezers and refrigerators. Spinwave provides additional sensors, capable of monitoring ultra-low temperature freezers and able to interface to CO2 sensors, pressure sensors, etc.

 

Automatic record keeping, alarming and reporting makes it easier for the hospital to comply with regulatory requirements.

 

 

Call us to discuss how we can assist you in accomplishing your hospital temperature monitoring objectives at 978-392-9000, x227 or email us at info@spinwavesystems.com

Contact FacilitiesNet Editorial Staff »   posted on: 9/26/2011