Wednesday, 17 August 2016
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Dear Colleagues,


Could you please share any links for documents (regulations or guidelines) where disscussed measuring interval for refrigerated truck monitoring systems (print-paper loggers).


Оr please share practice in your country.


Thank you in advance,


Regards

8 years ago
·
#4222

Andrey

 

Guidelines like how often temperature readings should be taken in truck transport are usually not prescribed (e.g. in EN BS12830) as these standards generally focus on the physical, technical and accuracy of the loggers.   A common sense approach would be to estimate how often the truck stops and has the doors open and fix the logging interval to cover this scenario.  I would have thought that every 15 minutes would be a good starting point and probably have more than one logger in the load and certainly one sited near the door.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Regards

 

Tom Lewis

Remonsys Ltd

8 years ago
·
#4223

Hello Andrei,

Thank you for your post on TechNet.  I’m not sure I understand your question entirely but I will comment anyway.

I don’t know of any measuring intervals for temperatures in refrigerated vehicles but the most recent specifications will require the vehicles to be fitted with a continuous readout in the driver’s cab of maximum and minimum temperatures of the vaccines in the body of the vehicle.  This readout will also be fitted with an audible alarm to alert the driver when temperatures are either too high of to low.

There will also be a recommendation that the temperature should:

1. either be stored electroncally in the vehicle and downloadable to a computer at the end of each trip, or

2.  the temperature data stored continuously in the ‘cloud’ so that the temperatures can be monitored from a distance – back at the central store, for example.

A Google search on “refrigerated truck temperature monitor” will give you some examples of companies that supply GPS vehicle location and temperature monitoring devices.  Some are simple, other are very sophisticated even measuring fuel consumption, for example. 

I don’t know of any vehicles using print-paper loggers.  These have been used for many years on vaccine cold rooms and the most recent WHO-PQS standards (January 2009) for cold rooms shows that electronic temperature monitoring is now required:

4.2.23 Temperature monitoring system:

  • A programmable electronic temperature and event logger system with auto-dialler complying with PQS E006/TR03 linked to the alarm system specified in clause
  1. 4.2.21. · Provide a backup gas or vapour pressure dial thermometer complying with PQS E006/TH02, mounted on the wall of the cold room in an accessible position.

Ref: PQS performance specification: Cold rooms and freezer rooms, WHO/PQS/E001/CR-FR01.4, page 9.

Two other WHO documents may be useful for your research on temperature monitoring in refrigerated vehicles:

1.  Qualification of refrigerated road vehicles Technical supplement to WHO Technical Report Series, No. 961, 2011 May 2015 Annex 9: Model guidance for the storage and transport of time- and temperature-sensitive pharmaceutical products.  http://www.who.int/medicines/areas/quality_safety/quality_assurance/supplement_11.pdf

2. Model guidance for the storage and transport of time- and temperature–sensitive pharmaceutical products.  WHO Technical Report Series, No.961, 2011, Annex 9, http://apps.who.int/prequal/info_general/documents/TRS961/TRS961_Annex9.pdf   “Temperature and humidity control and monitoring during transit” is described in detail in Section 6.5 on page 349 (!)

I hope this reply will be useful for you but if not, please make another post on TechNet and I will try again.

Now I have a question for the readers of this TechNet page, please.  Over the past three years, UNICEF has procured on average a new refrigerated vehicle every two months. Do you have any feedbackon new refrigerated vehicles, whether supplied by the Ministry, UNICEF or another agency?  Please tell me three things that work well with your new vehicles and three things that you think could be better.  We will use this information to help raise the standards of future procurement.

Many thanks.

James Cheyne (Currently working with WHO on specifications for refrigerated vehicles for vaccines and pharmaceuticals).

Hello, on a related topic, a few years back the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) published a job aid with technical specifications for refrigerated trucks. I attach it, and it also can be found in page 7 of the Immunization Newsletter of April 2011, www.paho.org/immunization/newsletter . No so much on temperature recording, but I thought it may be of interest to readers.

8 years ago
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#4233

Thank you for the PAHO specifications.  These are useful.

I have looked further into temperature monitoring intervals in refrigerated vehicles and I have learned that a standard interval on container-sized vehicles is typically once per hour. These vehicles have an internal volume of about 75m3

Many refrigerated vehicles for vaccines are typically smaller with a maximum volume of about 40m3 and to cope with more frequent stops and door opening, the future WHO guidance on temperature frequency monitoring will probably read something like: "Temperature sampling to include measurement at least every 15 minutes".  

I hope this is useful.

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