Healthcare Time and Temperature Integration

The 2020 coronavirus pandemic brought into sharp relief a number of issues in the healthcare and medtech sectors which were perhaps less well known. Among these is the monitoring of temperature and storage time on products that have a defined shelf life, or are most sensitive to their environment - everything from biological specimens and pharmaceutical products to the humble hospital curtain.

Greater sensitivity to infection issues means that today’s healthcare professional needs to consider best practice in the deployment of disposable time temperature indicators.

Safe chemical-based indicators are a simple approach to monitoring, and take the form of ‘smart’ self-adhesive labels offering an intuitive visual check for healthcare workers, complementing other important product data when administering pharmaceutical, vaccination or biological products.

Relatively low cost, they can be placed directly on the product or package to be monitored, starting at manufacturing or collection, and staying attached all the way to the end user. The simple labels can be initiated, read and understood by every level of employee that encounters the products.

Pharmaceuticals – the time monitoring

High value pharmaceutical products may have long shelf lives, but may be degraded much more quickly at elevated temperatures. One supplier of injector pens needed a way to ensure the integrity of its products in the community, and now uses an indicator to measure and report the time for which the temperature rises above 25ºC.

In another example, insulin supplies may need to be used within 28 days from opening. Hospitals monitoring their stock against their ‘use by’ date found that the clear visual indication from a time indicator label allowed them to check very large quantities quite quickly, and focus their attention on those approaching expiry.

One of the challenges in developing an effective smart indicator in this context is monitoring both the time for which a product has been stored and also the temperatures it has experienced over that time - a complex envelope of these two parameters.

An interesting development is a smart label formulation which closely follows the time / temperature limitations of materials even under changing conditions. This time/temperature integrator (TTI) reflects the accumulated history of the product during transport and storage, and gives a clear non-reversible visual indication when acceptable conditions have been breached.

A number of indicator products can be found on the market. However, one drawback of some of these products is that they change colour with time, and thus the breach indication signal is ambiguous and subject to human error, visual interpretations of colour shades, etc. Timestrip addresses this issue by incorporating a distinct coloured frontline that progresses laterally inside a white bar from one side to the other, providing a distinct indication of an end point i.e. the breach event. 

Electronic Time Temperature Integration Indicators

An electronic alternative to the liquid-based self-adhesive indicators discussed above has recently emerged that offers the best of both worlds. Timestrip neo combines the ease of use and cost effectiveness of liquid sealed indicators with greater accuracy and customization options.

This opens up a wider range of applications that can be monitored cost effectively throughout the healthcare sector, in pharmaceuticals and other high value products with temperature sensitive products.

Read more about electronic time temperature integrators