The Dubai Health Authority’s (DHA) Pharmaceutical Services Department announced the adoption of a smart system that monitors and tracks the temperatures of medication throughout the cold chain of pharmaceuticals, ensuring that the quality, safety and effectiveness of medication is maintained.
Cold chain is a temperature controlled supply chain, which provides an uninterrupted series of refrigerated production, storage and distribution activities to maintain the desired low temperature of consumable goods such as pharmaceuticals. Monitoring the cold chain to ensure that pharmaceuticals reach patients safely is on the biggest challenges faced by health organisations around the world.
The smart system adopted by the DHA includes computer tablets integrated with the medical refrigerators and refrigerator rooms. The tablets will automatically register and document the temperature. The data will be displayed visually on the tablets in a graph format that shows the correct temperature limits and documents them.
The tablets will send alerts in the form of text messages and emails in the event the temperature moves beyond the specified limit. It will provide electronic reports regarding the medical storage and safety of the medication. These systems can also be controlled electronically through their own website.
Smart technology will also document the temperature during transportation of the medication from the storage to the pharmacies. These miniaturised smart devices are connected to the computer and display in graph form the temperatures the medication was subjected to through the transportation process.
Dr Ali Al Sayed, the Director of the Pharmaceutical Services Department at the DHA said, “The system was implemented by the authority to maintain patient’s safety and achieve customer satisfaction as these systems preserve the safety of the medication by tracking and controlling the temperature the medication is subjected to throughout the transportation process until the medication reaches the patient.”