Transport containers

[JOANBALONE]

Hi everyone,

I am interested in how hospitals transport platelets and red cells outside of their facilty to another hospital or to a department outside of the hospital . Our blood products are walked outside a short distance from our hospital to a department outside of the hospital and in the future we may ship, via driver, from one hospital to another. I would like to know how you have validated your containers for outside temperature extremes (like below 0°F and 100°F) and your transit times. If your transit time is very short do you even validate your cooler? Do you include a data logger or other device with each shipment to monitor transport temperature? I am just starting this project and may need to ask more questions later.

Edited April 23, 2009 by JOANBALONE
punctuation

[clmergen]

To transfer between the hospitals in our system we use our Blood Supplier's boxes and follow their packing instructions. Its already been validated by the blood supplier and we don't do anything extra.

[FRahman]

we place a temperature monitor on each unit which shows the temprature during transportation at an arrival.

[Alternatives]

Attached document could be useful for you.

Basically, 2 options:

- Use your own qualified shipper/cooler (meaning validated under protocol to prove it ables to maintain required internal temperature, during your laps of time, under external conditions -ambiant and/or summer and winter-). Monitor it on a regular basis (every 3 months) in order to make sure qualification and packaging method is stille effective.

- Monitor all your shipments if you don't use any qualified shipper/cooler

Benoît

CBBS Monitoring temperature of blood products transported within the hospital.pdf

[heathervaught]

When we validate new boxes, we test worst case scenario: one unit in the box, placed in extreme temperatures. For example, we put a box in our plasma storage freezer (-20 C or below) with a temp-record device, then let it sit for a period of time. After the time is up, we remove the temperature recording device, download the graph, and determine how long it stayed within 20-24 degrees. We would repeat for a warm temperature...we find a nice warm boiler room in which to set the box for the desired period of time. These boxes are used to transport our finished product to any of our customers, some of which are sent on a Fed Ex plane overnight.

We also use coolers for "short" "controlled" trips between our centers. These were validated by sending them on routine trips with the temperature recorder inside. We didn't think it was necessary to go to the same extent that we validate our boxes, since the coolers are only outside for short periods of time, and transported in comfortable conditions otherwise. We do check the temperature of each cooler upon arrival at our facility.