Ensure Patient Safety with Hospital Temperature Monitoring Systems
Best Practices for Controlled Biobanking and Biorepositories
Modern veterinary care has evolved into a highly advanced sector in the medical arena. Thanks to ongoing biomedical advancements, veterinary practices have progressed to new levels of treatments for our pets, livestock and wildlife.
Given the sensitivity of veterinary drugs and medications, maintaining a sufficiently controlled environment in the veterinary practice is a necessary and regulatory obligation. Manual observation and data logging efforts for continuous temperature management, for example, are one such factor that can negate drug stability.
With the new digital age comes advanced veterinary specific technology! From advanced patient management software to the implementation of AI systems, data logging is just another factor of managing veterinary practices that can be automated to offer regulatory compliance, safeguard drug stability and relieve from manual logging.
The advanced world of veterinary care
Although your beloved pet may disagree, Veterinarians play a critical role in our society, offering a fundamental service for essential animal care.
Biomedical research throughout the 20th and 21st century brought great developments within veterinary science. The emergence of surgical advancements, diagnostic imaging, anaesthesia techniques and advanced pharmaceuticals, to name a few, have significantly enhanced the quality of care provided to animals.
Playing an essential role in preventing disease, managing illness, and ensuring the welfare of various animal species is a comprehensive collection of veterinary pharmaceuticals. To provide instant treatment and disease management, veterinaries require specific environments for sufficient drug, vaccine and medicine storage. This is where temperature-controlled storage solutions become of vital regulatory importance.
Veterinary temperature monitoring regulations
Like most healthcare settings, veterinary temperature monitoring plays a pivotal role in the preservation of medicine. Adequate data logging is a regulatory requirement, with physical documentation of temperature management being a necessary condition within both vets and animal hospitals.
Despite strict regulations ensuring there is demonstrable appropriate monitoring and a compliant temperature-controlled environment, regular monitoring within the industry is far from perfect.
In fact, the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (RCVS) found that there was little evidence of temperature monitoring for veterinary medicines in 47% of PSS assessments. This is not only worrying for the health of our beloved pets, but poses a number of risks to medicinal treatment being effective:
Preserving medical potency
Adequate temperature monitoring is essential for maintaining the medical potency and stability of a vast range of medications, such as antibiotics, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs or topical antiseptics. All of which require storage at ambient temperature, with storage temperatures ranging from 8°C and 25°C.
Refrigerated storage is also required for preventative medications including vaccines, insulin, biologics, certain injectable medications and hormonal medications. For these pharmaceuticals, temperature should be maintained between 2°C and 8°.
Without continuous monitoring, veterinary practices have no confirmation that they’re accurately preserving their crucial supply of therapeutics.
Mitigating risk and minimizing waste
Much like our pooches wouldn’t want their fresh, high reward treats stored in a cupboard, inappropriate storage of medicinal products leaves veterinary environments vulnerable to medicine deterioration well before their sell-by dates.
Failing to manage the exact temperatures risks them falling beyond required specifications. If this occurs over prolonged periods it will diminish shelf life and make them unsuitable to administer.
Imagine if your chosen veterinary practice’s drug storage temperature had deviated outside of the required temperature, the medical efficacy is now compromised, and if this goes unnoticed, practitioners would be unknowingly administering insufficient treatments with diminished therapeutic effect. The alternative is that medicines are noticeably spoiled and forcibly wasted.
Ensuring regulatory compliance
Within the UK, the RCVS is the regulatory body responsible for enforcing the standards for veterinary education, professional conduct, and practice accreditation. Ensuring that all veterinary practices adhere to highly ethical and professional standards through regular inspection.
These inspections place emphasis on the importance of regular temperature monitoring, with the RCVS proposing daily temperature checks and producing written records for demonstrative evidence. Failure to meet appropriate standards may result in the opening of an investigation followed by a re-inspection, ultimately leading to probation or suspension should conditions not improve.
The fatal flaw with manual temperature monitoring
Temperature monitoring can either be executed through wireless temperature monitoring systems or by manual observation and recording of data. When the recommended quantity of temperature assessments to be carried out being three times daily, manual data logging can be time consuming.
Manual observations for the veterinary sector are typically carried out by a trusted employee and often implemented using a standard thermometer and data logger. Because this is an inevitably flawed procedure which is highly susceptible to human error, it’s a likely contributor to the poor temperature monitoring observed during veterinary inspections.
Manual checks are inherently inconsistent, with even the smallest factors risking fluctuations, from who collects the readings to the time the readings are conducted and more. This means it’s unlikely that manual logging captures the full picture of all temperatures throughout the day and night.
With this in mind, automated procedures have proved to champion temperature control in veterinary spaces, leveraged to provide instant, continuous, and automatic data logging and management, liberating employees from an additional monotonous task.
Take the Royal Veterinary College’s Equine Referral Hospital and Equine Ambulatory Practice as an example, who implemented the AiroSensor temperature monitoring system to replace their manual procedures. A magnitude of positive feedback was collected in their case study.
With the AIroSensor automated data logger advocating a ‘fit and forget’ concept, the device acts as a discreet helping hand to veterinaries, running in the background to provide a comprehensive, detailed and highly accurate record of all temperature-controlled environments within the facility.
Think of automated temperature monitoring as an invisible partner; not overtly involved in the day-to-day processes but providing a vital role in the background through its stealthy data collection and continuous data logging!
Veterinary temperature monitoring made easy with an AiroSensor
They say that big things come in small packages. But they’re even better if they’re wireless, robust, and come with a 10-year battery life guarantee.
Harnessing technology that goes beyond just data logging, the AiroSensor takes the hassle off your hands by providing an automated, cloud-based data logging system for your temperature monitoring needs.
With 24/7 monitoring, real-time logging requirements are met with ease, providing around-the-clock protection even outside of work hours and holiday periods. Partnered with an automated alarm system, veterinary medications are protected from any undetected temperature fluctuations that would otherwise go unnoticed.
Better yet, instant, in-depth reports are generated with just one click, streamlining regulatory compliance effortlessly. With manual input no longer needed, veterinary temperature monitoring is made easy with an AiroSensor.
Like to see for yourself? Get in touch with Withnell Sensors to discuss your free 7-day trail! Transform your temperature monitoring process and further protect the animals who require efficacious therapeutic treatments.
