We have a new platelet incubator in a remote location and it has been hooked up to Isensix, but not hard-wired to Security (whose will make sure someone responds to the alarm). According to my operation manual, the alarm check on the unit needs to be done quarterly. Do I still do the alarm check on the unit's alarm even though it is not hooked up to security? Do I do the alarm check on the Isensix unit quarterly? If so, how is that check performed?

I would like to know also, I have validated the procedure for doing this but we havent started to use it (due to finishing recent inspections/training new grads/computer upgrades....we all know how it rains). We were going to use the alarms on the units (fridges/freezers/incubators) and do alarm check on those and just using the Isensix as a chart recorder. I am not 100% sure we can do this, so we havent gone further with it...that my project for this week!

I know what you mean about other things keeping you busy. We are set to go live with a new hospital system with physician ordering next week, followed by the lab system build, a physical move of the lab, and inspection. The platelet incubator has been up and running for about 3 weeks now and I was quite surprised when I went up there to do the alarm check and found that instead of being hard-wired, it is on ISENSIX. I am feeling a bit of pressure to get this thing validated so that it can be used, but I want to make sure I'm doing it right.

I think what you have to check for isensix quarterlies depends on how far you have gone in the alarm response settings of isensix. Basic setting is alarm condition on the website which have to be manually reviewed and cleared with a comment through the website. Does the website show alarm condition when they are triggered? Next level is having a flasher/audible alarm set up - if you have one of those youd have to check it actually goes off and hopefully its in a place that Is staffed - do those personnel know how to respond? Highest level of response is enabling the remote calling feature of isensix where if alarms are not cleared in a set amount of time, it starts calling or texting whatever numbers you have put in. Do those go through in the timeframes you have set, to the right numbers, specifiying the correct equipment? We do both the equipment alarms and remote activation alarms (the hospital operator for us) bc our feeling is the equipment alarming is a part of normal functioning of the equipment. Isensix does have outages (most notably during generator tests for us) and we'd never feel comfortable imagining our freezers sitting there happily warming up and not saying anything about it We posted a sign on our lab door saying "alarm after hours/on weekends? call pager xxx-xxxx!" which at least gives passerby a chance to let you know if it's been going on a while. We have not gone live with using isensix solely for alarms and instead have a wierd chimera of using the operator for notification and the web system for nice documentation and temperature trend review.

Edited April 12, 201213 yr by CM2
elucidation of obfuscatory phraseology

We bit the bullet and converted to using Isensix only as our official alarm and monitoring system. We have not turned off the equipment alarms but it was crazy testing both systems and having them go off at slightly different temperatures so we picked Isensix. We test the alarms quarterly just like for the old system. We will plan to test the software to make sure the alerts are all set up right etc. probably annually. There should not be any decay in the software, only that someone might make a change that they shouldn't have. Since this is highly unlikely, I think annual will be good enough for that part. We get enough real-life blips to make sure the pop-ups are working and we are getting emails and this will also be tested during alarm tests. We are not using the phone aspect for alerts. Our Isensix system plugs in so we get power alerts if the power is off. They still operate on battery. We would only have downtimes if the network were down which fortunately is very rare. We had to start using the correction factors for our NIST thermometer because reading everything in 10ths of a degree required as much precision as we could muster to get things to match. We put the corrections into Excel sheets so the corrected value is calculated for us.

I don't know what happened, but the link went down for this piece of equipment over the weekend and it is still down. Good thing it isn't in use yet.

That sounds like an IT issue - loss of network. Isensix set up correctly would alert you to loss of network. You can have the Isensix alert go to any text receiver - email, text pager, cell phone. We have ours go to a text pager in the BB for alarms 1 and 2. Alarm 3 goes to a supervisory pager. Isensix is a great remote monitoring system. It sounds like your hospital uses it other than BB - someone on site should be able to show you the features, how it works and the best way to configure it for you.