How to properly store medications and vaccines during the summer?
The hot summer period is especially challenging for storing medicines, vaccines and temperature-sensitive pharmaceuticals. Often improper storage of pharmaceuticals during the summer months can cause a change in the composition and pharmaceutical form of the drug. To avoid temperature deviations and spoilage of medicines, we bring 8 tips for proper storage of pharmaceuticals and temperature control in cooling devices.
Heat is the biggest threat to drug and vaccine storage
The pharmaceutical industry prescribes a series of strict rules that ensure optimal temperature along the entire cold chain - from storage to transportation of pharmaceuticals.
Excessive temperature is a particular risk in storage areas and rooms with refrigerators and freezers. If your refrigeration equipment (pharmaceutical refrigerators) also malfunctions, negative consequences for your pharmaceutical products are inevitable.
How to avoid temperature deviations in pharmaceutical refrigerators?
Here are a few things to keep in mind to avoid possible temperature deviations during the summer months:
- Large temperature fluctuations in refrigeration equipment during the summer are not surprising. To minimize the risk of excessive oscillations, we recommend using a temperature monitoring system with continuous monitoring and alarms. In this way, the system warns you of possible changes, which allows you to react in a timely manner even before the deviation becomes unacceptable.
- Be sure to consider the cooling capacity of your equipment. If the refrigeration equipment is located in a room that is warmer than usual during the summer, the equipment cannot be refrigerated as in optimal conditions. For this reason, it is important to consider the amount of product you put in the refrigerator - a larger quantity inside the device will not be able to cool at the same rate as under normal conditions! If you use continuous temperature monitoring systems, you can track how long it takes for the temperature to stabilize when new products are placed in the device and compare it to the time it would normally take.
- Increasing the ambient temperature also automatically affects the temperature of the warmer areas of the device, which can result in critically high temperatures in your equipment. In these places, the temperature may be higher than normal, so you should consider whether to use these areas at all during the summer months.
- If your goods are directly exposed to sunlight, we suggest measuring and recording the temperature in areas that are directly exposed to the sun, to ensure that in those areas, the temperature during the day is not critically high.
Protect your precious pharmaceuticals during the summer months
Fortunately, there are a lot of options to avoid large temperature deviations during the summer. Here are some of them.
- Be careful! The most important thing you can do is to use a temperature monitoring system that continuously monitors the temperature of your equipment and storage space and notifies you in case the temperature approaches a critical level. This will allow you to manage temperature oscillations in a timely manner and avoid destroying your precious goods.
- Make sure that the cooling equipment has enough space! Refrigeration equipment needs a lot of space to be able to reject unnecessary temperature. We recommend separation from the wall to reduce additional heat. In addition, there must be enough space and air above and to the side. Your refrigeration equipment will work better the more it can dissipate heat, and it will also provide you with lower electricity bills. You can also help your refrigeration equipment by, for example, lowering the room temperature by turning on the air conditioner or opening a window in the morning so that warm air can escape.
- To further protect yourself from sunlight, use curtains or other methods to reduce the amount of sunlight that directly affects your equipment and items.
- Consider the amount of products you put in the refrigerator - in large quantities your device will not cool properly. When you refill your refrigeration equipment with new products, the temperature will rise if it has not been previously refrigerated. Therefore, it is very important to distribute the new products you put in the appliance to several appliances or to put them gradually in the refrigeration appliance.
Consider data loggers to monitor the temperature of medications in refrigeration equipment
To ensure our goods are temperature sensitive in refrigeration units during the summer months, we suggest using the Eupry system for continuous temperature monitoring. This solution is ideal for automated monitoring of environmental conditions because through the online application you always have access to temperature data, and in case of deviation will notify you by free SMS or e-mail, even on weekends or weekdays when you are not physically present at work.
Many companies today use standardized USB solutions, which do not have as many advantages compared to wireless devices. If you are looking for an ideal solution for continuous temperature monitoring in the pharmaceutical industry and/or are hesitant about these two operating principles, find out what are the advantages of using wireless data loggers in the document "USB data loggers or Eupry wireless data logger?"
See original text on Eupry website.