A vaccines transit box that can feed back alerts when high temperatures endanger the precious cargo is expected to save money, avoid waste and prevent useless vaccines being given to patients. The Medicase reusable transit box is due to be unveiled at a meeting of the EU Information Society Technologies (IST) programme in the Netherlands in November. One version of the case includes a built-in data logger that produces an audit trail of interior and ambient temperatures, a GPS satellite navigation receiver and GSM mobile phone for communications. An announcement from IST says that research shows that a surprising proportion of medical supplies and samples become damaged during transit representing a serious problem both for supplier and end users. In addition to sounding the alarm if temperatures rise, the Medicase will maintain temperatures for up to seven days. IST quotes the case of a customer who received a consignment of vaccinations worth millions of euros, which turned out to be denatured. The damage arose because the plane carrying the consignment had had to wait a long time on the runway, and this caused an unacceptable rise in temperature. “It doesn’t take long for a vaccine to become useless if the ambient temperature rises to 20-25 degrees Celsius,” explains Colin Rickson of Kryotrans, and head of Medicase exploitation. “The conventional solution is to use packaging made from expanded polystyrene and cardboard, but these can only maintain the temperature for a limited period and are difficult to dispose of." Production of the intelligent transit boxes is expected to start early in 2005.
Part of the problem with conventional packaging is that the end user cannot be certain that the temperature limits have been exceeded. “When meningitis vaccinations were given to high-risk groups in Wales several years ago, it was subsequently found that over half had not received protection. The cause was traced to overheating of the vaccines in transit," adds Rickson.
