Wireless Temp Monitoring

[BANKTECH]

Hi Everyone! We just had a wireless temperature monitoring system installed for the whole hospital. I don't have access to the equipment for Blood Bank. I have some questions I hope someone can guide me in the right direction. First off, I think I need access to this information. Secondly, would I validate all the temperatures against the NIST for high and low alarm points (we do this for all equipment quarterly). In refrigerators, should there be an upper and lower bottle for the wireless program? Do we keep the manual thermometers in upper and lower locations in addition to the wireless bottles? :confused:Does the wireless system and manual system need QC'd quarterly? :confused:Does everyone still take temps daily once the equipment has been properly qualified, or is a daily alarm check sufficient? :confused:If anyone can answer these questions or has anything additional that I might not have mentioned, I would like to hear about it. Thanks in advance for all your help with this.

[tbostock]

We went live with a wireless temperature system, TempSys, last year. I love it.

1. You NEED access to the system; ask for the software for the system to be installed on at least one PC in Blood Bank. I look at my temperature charts every day, and I also go into the system when the equipment alarms to enter corrective action.

2. For the initial validation, we checked all of the temp probes against an NIST thermometer. We now do this annually.

3. Yes, for Blood Bank equipment, we have dual probes: one for the top shelf and one for the bottom. The graph shows data for both probes.

4. Yes, we still have thermometers on the top and bottom. We no longer take manual temps (TempSys is our primary system, and we use the recording charts as our backup), but we keep the thermometers in there for troubleshooting purposes.

5. Quarterly we only test the alarm activation (high and low temps) of the equipment. We only do thermometer validation on the probes annually.

6. During the first couple months, we documented all temps (manual thermometer, chart recorder, wireless readings). Once we were satisfied with the consistency of the new system, we stopped taking the manual temps. TempSys also lets us print graphs, so I print them weekly and save them for inspectors...not really necessary, but I found that some inspectors still LOVE to see paper records.

[BANKTECH]

Thank you so much for the information, Terri!!

One more question: Has your wireless temperature monitoring system ever stopped working?

[tbostock]

Thank you so much for the information, Terri!!

One more question: Has your wireless temperature monitoring system ever stopped working?

No, we have had it for a year, and it has never been down. We have recording charts on our BB equipment, so that is backup should the wireless system ever go down.

[Mabel Adams]

We have one remote site on our system (airplane hangar blood fridge) that has gone off the network a time or two. It has to talk to the server via the internet rather than our intranet so it is more vulnerable. Otherwise, our system has been up continually for over a year.