Monitoring vaccine temperatures effectively

With 25 years’ experience in electronics engineering, and now specialising in data logging solutions, David Ing, Standard Products manager at Corintech, considers the role that advanced sensors and data loggers could play in the successful delivery of potent vaccines. 

The race to supply an effective COVID-19 vaccine is well underway. Pharmaceutical giants across the globe are joining forces in an attempt to develop, test, and manufacture, a vaccine that can bring an end to the greatest global health crisis of our time. 1 Even once pharmaceutical companies have overcome the monumental task of getting an effective vaccine to large-scale production, they are then faced with the challenge of mass distribution across the globe. It is likely that we will need to see the strategic deployment of potentially limited vaccine doses on a scale never witnessed before. If, and when, the vaccine arrives, scarcity of supply is likely to make it highly valuable, and will place great emphasis on the proper handling of doses

One particular issue to consider is that vaccine potency is highly sensitive to light and temperature. If not properly handled, there is a risk of irreversible damage to the vaccine, causing it to lose potency and become unfit to administer to a patient. It is absolutely critical that the temperature of any vaccine is closely monitored throughout its cold chain, and that robust reports are maintained to guarantee that only potent vaccines are administered to patients. When a vaccine is as scarce and as valuable as the COVID-19 vaccine is anticipated to be, the importance of this is magnified.