Automated, Around-the-Clock Temperature Monitoring Gives Pharmacy Owner and Staff Peace of Mind

Whether inside a hospital or a free-standing location, pharmacies play an integral role in healthcare delivery. Usually working long hours, pharmacists review prescription orders, check for drug interactions, educate patients on their medications, and provide vaccinations. They also rely on storage units to keep those medications and vaccines safe and effective.

But what happens if there’s a power outage? Or if a refrigerator or freezer door is left open on accident for an extended period of time? Those medications and vaccines could go to waste, impacting both patient care and a pharmacy’s bottom line. And when everything appears normal, pharmacy staff still have to check temperatures and document them to ensure compliance with regulations and guidelines. This constant concern and manual logging documentation process add to an already heavy workload for pharmacists, one that staff at Hayat Pharmacy in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, know well.

“We had a variety of different digital data loggers in place to monitor the temperature of pharmacy refrigerators, but that was a very manual process,” said Dimmy Sokhal, director of clinical services at Hayat Pharmacy. “We had to extract the data, put it on a flash drive, and then into an excel sheet and visually look for any temperature excursions. It was time-consuming and cumbersome.” Read more >