Temperature Monitoring Systems for Pharmacy Refrigerators

Elevate your team’s performance and increase patient confidence with ready-to-use visual temperature Indicators

Confidently managing pharmaceutical or biologic products often comes down to moments of decision. Think about a courier delivering a GLP-1 therapy to a patient’s home, a clinician wondering if a vaccine has been handled properly, a doctor accepting a blood product in an operating room, or a patient preparing injectable medication at home. All of them to be confident that the vaccine, unit or medicine has been maintained within the appropriate temperature range to ensure its safe use and effectiveness.

That challenge is becoming more important as medications evolve, with up to 70% of new medicines over the next five years expected to require special handling, administration, and patient care.

Indeed, we all need clear, scientifically robust, simple, and cost-effective ways to quickly understand if medicines have experienced potentially harmful temperature excursions. That’s what Zebra’s visual temperature indicators provide, as described in our new eBook: Confidently managing pharmaceutical cold chains with visual indicators.

Making temperature status visible

Our visual and ready-to-use temperature indicators are standalone or self-adhesive sensors designed to monitor heat, freeze, or dual exposures during shipping and storage. They provide irreversible or reversible color changes to visually identify if sensitive items like vaccines, blood bags, or therapies like GLP-1 injectables have been compromised by temperature exposures.

Rigorously tested for accuracy and purposefully designed for simplicity, no calibration or expensive electronic hardware is needed. Their visual signals are easy for people to understand, and they are a great solution for mass market products, typically costing between $0.25 to $2.50 per unit. 

Confidence from pharmacy to home: Zebra TransTracker™

If you are shipping temperature-sensitive therapies to patients, cold chain confidence must extend into the last mile; a requirement fulfilled by Zebra TransTracker™. These durable, single-use cards, which integrate one or more temperature-sensing technologies, monitor for heat, freeze, or dual-heat / freeze exposures. The single-use devices are easy to read, irreversible, and typically placed inside secondary packages or shipping boxes.

The indicators remove uncertainty, giving people the confidence that their medicines have been handled properly, while delivering a clear cost benefit to you by significantly reducing the number of re-ship requests or rejected items due to suspected heat or

freeze events. TransTrackers can be branded with your logo, colors, and text,

such as customer service contact details. The customization differentiates your service and emphasizes your brand’s commitment to quality and patient care.

A range of TransTracker shipment indicators are available covering the most common temperature requirements.

Remove guesswork in the home

Most injectable therapies are refrigerated for storage, but are recommended for use at room temperature for stability and patient comfort during administration. Zebra LIMITmarker™ indicators give patients the insight they need to manage their therapies with a clear visual signal showing when a medication has reached the desired temperature, and in some formats, when it should be returned to refrigeration.

The indicator removes patient anxiety by taking away the guesswork, math, and timers from their daily injection routine and prevents prolonged temperature exposures, which could degrade drugs. LIMITmarker transforms a standard autoinjector into a smart, patient-friendly device, which, in turn, increases people’s confidence in the efficacy of their therapies and their trust in manufacturers and suppliers’ brands.

Visual vaccine verification

From a clinic in a major city to those in remote areas, our vaccine vial monitors (VVMs) provide the critical visual confirmation professionals administering vaccines need to be confident that vaccines haven’t experienced problematic heat exposures.

HEATmarker™ VVM, LIMITmarker™, FREEZEmarker™, and TransTracker with LIMITmarker are ready-to-use, self-adhesive, and easy-to-understand indicators that may be attached to the primary package or secondary package by the vaccine manufacturer. The temperature monitors cover key time/temperature ranges for common vaccines. We have shipped over 12 billion VVMs and counting, which have improved the lives of 1.2 billion children worldwide.

Protecting blood stocks

With blood, every unit counts, and with our Safe-T-Vue monitors, you gain the insight you need to protect stocks. They provide a clear visual indication of blood that has been exposed to potentially damaging heat. The activatable and self-adhesive indicators are attached directly to bags, showing a non-reversible color change to alert doctors, nurses, and clinicians of potentially damaging heat exposure. Two categories are available, one for refrigerated storage at 6 °C, and one for blood products in transit or temporary storage at 10 °C.

Why Zebra

We have a long track record in the life science and healthcare markets with our solutions designed for the sector’s unique demands. 

Our temperature monitoring devices are manufactured at our Morris Plains facility under an ISO 13485-certified quality management system for medical devices, while we also hold ISO 9001 certification. Safe-T-Vue is also an FDA-cleared medical device.

For more information on our temperature indicators, download the ebook or visit: zebra.com/environmental-sensors