Wireless sensor warns if vaccines get too hot

Friday, September 19, 2014

A wireless sensor that sends text message alerts to healthcare workers could help better protect temperature-sensitive vaccines and provide crucial data on storage, transport and distribution infrastructures in developing nations, according to its inventors.

After successfully piloting the ColdTrace sensor in Kenya, US non-profit tech firm Nexleaf Analytics expanded the field tests to India and Mozambique. It says the system will soon also be piloted in Haiti. At approximately US$65 per device, the sensor costs a fraction of the price of competitors’ models, says Nexleaf Analytics project coordinator Shahrzad Yavari.

“We have observed first hand that the absence of the right information at the right time prevents even the most committed clinic workers from ensuring that vaccine storage refrigerators are operating correctly 24 hours a day,” says Yavari.

Source: SciDev.Net (link opens in a new window)

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Health Care
Tags
healthcare technology, infectious diseases, vaccines