Development of an information system for tracking temperature of vaccine samples

Abstract

Vaccines require to be stored under specific temperatures to guarantee their potency. Globally, losses on vaccines due to temperature changes are estimated at $34.1 billion annually while in storage and transit. With the recent global pandemics such as the MERS outbreak of 2012 and SARS CoV-2 in 2019, millions of vaccines are being moved to different parts of the world requiring an efficient and effective cold storage system that ensures that vaccine samples are not affected by exposure to unfavorable temperature ranges. The major objective of the study was to develop an Information System that can be used to track temperatures of vaccine samples in storage and transit. The research followed a mixed research approach that involved in-depth interviews guided by a questionnaire into the study of cold chain management of vaccines in Uganda and hence determine the design specifications and user requirements. A cost-effective data acquisition system is proposed based on a raspberry Pi as a gateway and DS18B20 sensor that can collect and transmit vaccine temperature data to the cloud platform which can be accessed over the internet. The key result of the study was a prototype of the vaccine temperature tracking system. The system provides real time and historical data relating to the vaccine temperatures. Notifications in form of email alerts are sent to the users of the system in instances where the vaccine temperatures are not in the optimum configured ranges. Tests demonstrated that the real-time alerts for temperature excursions can increase staff’s awareness to any conditions that would affect the cold chain performance and hence enabling decision making on whether to administer a vaccine batch or not. Thus, the system, if adopted can reduce the burden of vaccine condition reporting on health care workers while improving the completeness and timeliness of vaccine sample information. Recommendations have been made for the government to consider the development and deployment of the proposed system to enable end to end tracking of vaccine conditions in a bid to maintain vaccine potency and avoiding possible wastage. A key factor to consider is the issue of information security risks that are posed by threats such as hackers and malwares that the systems are vulnerable to and thus need for implementing of information security procedures that comply with the ISO 27001 standard.