How the Internet of Things technology keeps the pharmaceutical cold chain logistics continuous

In recent years, there have been frequent drug safety incidents in China, and electronic regulation of drugs has caused widespread concern. The Shandong vaccine incident in March 2016 was exposed. Due to the lack of supervision of vaccines in the cold chain transportation and distribution links, the unrefrigerated vaccines flowed to 24 provinces and cities through illegal channels, and the illegal cases involved were as high as 570 million yuan.

Not to mention the amount of money involved, the resulting life-threatening threats are shocking enough. After all, vaccines are a special class of drugs. They contain pathogens that have been artificially processed. They not only retain the characteristics (antigenicity) that the immune system can recognize, but also destroy their lethality.

As biological products, vaccines are sensitive to temperature, and high or low temperatures will affect them. From vaccine production and delivery to vaccination, there are multiple circulation, transportation and storage links. In order to ensure the stability and antigenicity of the vaccine, the entire cold chain is particularly important.

Vaccines that are not kept strictly in accordance with the requirements of vaccine preservation can be called over-temperature vaccines. As the news says, the biggest problem with over-temperature vaccines is their failure. However, if you are vaccinated with a super-temperature rabies vaccine, it does not effectively protect the human body. If a rabies virus infection occurs, it is really dead.

For the entire population, the impact of ineffective vaccines may not be obvious in a short time, but the long-term potential risks are still huge: Imagine if most people are vaccinated for one or more diseases. That will inevitably increase the risk of large-scale outbreaks or epidemics of diseases, which is the greater consequence of this vicious event.

As early as 2017, Liu Jian, CEO of Zhejiang Yuehe Technology Co., Ltd., said at the 9th Shenzhen International Internet of Things Expo held by Shenzhen Internet of Things Media, "In recent years, most of the vaccine problems have been exposed. It is all because of the disconnection of the cold chain and the uncontrolled supervision. "It is the problem that the entire temperature control and traceability of pharmaceuticals such as vaccines cannot be performed.

So, the question is, how can we make the whole process of pharmaceutical cold chain logistics continuous and traceable?

At present, the traditional monitoring methods existing in the pharmaceutical cold chain market are mainly based on monitoring the ambient temperature. It is difficult to establish an effective link between the monitoring point and the single object under test and form a regulatory loophole.

The temperature sensing tag based on RFID technology may be one of the ways to break the situation. Apply a passive temperature-sensitive label with identification to the smallest packaging of the vaccine and use it as a data collection point to refine the supervision from the ambient temperature to the object itself.

The "core" of the temperature sensor tag is a passive UHF RFID temperature sensor chip embedded in the tag, which is 3 mm long and 2 mm wide. In addition to the intelligent identification function of the Internet of Things, it is also a miniature wireless temperature sensor, which has the characteristics of light weight, no battery, high precision and long-distance temperature measurement.

At the same time, the temperature sensor tag can also achieve the purposes of real-time collection, real-time warning, over-temperature alarm, and full traceability through real-time data communication, to prevent data tampering, fraud and other events, and to change the post-examination inspection into an early warning, so that the enterprise While reducing the cost of cold chain transportation, it further reduces the loss rate of products, and supports the disclosure of the entire process monitoring data to all users. Users can clearly understand the full life cycle of the individual products they inoculate through WeChat scan codes and other forms. Happening.

With the help of the IoT technology of the Internet of Things, the full traceability of medicines is achieved through RFID tags. At the same time, the whole temperature of the vaccine is monitored, and the problem of broken chains in the cold chain logistics of medicine is solved.

Although there are still many unknown factors in the pharmaceutical cold chain logistics, its prospects are still in the future. With the economic development and technological progress, China's demand for refrigerated medicines has grown rapidly. The cold chain logistics industry of major pharmaceutical cold storage such as vaccine products and injections will have a broad space for development, and the Internet of Things technology as a cold chain logistics development The right assistant will also get more attention.