Drug Discovery and Development

  • Home Drug Discovery and Development
  • Drug Discovery
  • Women in Pharma and Biotech
  • Oncology
  • Neurological Disease
  • Infectious Disease
  • Resources
    • Video features
    • Podcast
    • Voices
    • Webinars
  • Pharma 50
    • 2025 Pharma 50
    • 2024 Pharma 50
    • 2023 Pharma 50
    • 2022 Pharma 50
    • 2021 Pharma 50
  • Advertise
  • SUBSCRIBE

Regulator keeps vaccines at right temperature

By Drug Discovery Trends Editor | May 10, 2013

Rice senior Josh Mrozack shows the SAFE Vaccine device during the university’s recent Engineering Design Showcase. The device regulates temperatures in standard refrigerators used to store vaccines and tracks their usage. Photo: Jeff Fitlow/Rice UniversityRice University students have created a way to help health care workers track vaccines and keep them at a safe temperature.

The SAFE Vaccine senior engineering design team, working at the request of Patrick McColloster, an associate professor of family and community medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, assembled a device to regulate the temperature of any standard refrigerator to keep it within a range that’s safe for vaccines. Their invention also tracks vaccine stock, usage and expiration dates and, as a result, takes a load of paperwork off the backs of nurses.

A 2011 study by McColloster determined that many refrigerators in Houston medical facilities were freezing vaccines. While freezing doesn’t necessarily destroy them, the vaccines are less effective once they thaw.

Installing laboratory-standard refrigerators would solve the problem, McColloster says. “But average physicians are not going to have these. They wouldn’t be able to afford them.”

Many of these physicians are part of the massive Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)  Vaccines for Children program that serves millions each year. “When I did the study, I initially thought this was an idiosyncratic problem here,” McColloster says, but noted the federal Department of Health and Human Services’ inspector general issued a report in 2012 that found refrigeration problems nationwide.

“The problem isn’t that the vaccines are wasted or thrown away because of improper temperature management,” says Amanda Walborn, a member of the SAFE Vaccine team. “It’s that the vaccine gets damaged and nobody knows it. And it gets administered anyway.”

Walborn and her teammates, Anisha Kunder, Josh Mrozack, Max Chester, and Andres Martin de Nicolas, found the rudimentary temperature controls in standard refrigerators make it hard to keep vaccines within the mandated range of 2 to 8 C.

Vaccine refrigerators are opened and closed many times during the day, and nurses often turn the thermostat down to compensate, McColloster found.

“They set it to the lowest setting to keep it cold enough,” Martin de Nicolas says. “But if they leave it there overnight and during weekends, the temperature will drop too much. It’s very easy to overlook.”

McColloster approached the team’s adviser, Maria Oden, director of the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen, to see if Rice students could build a better system.

“He wanted us to build a fridge,” Martin de Nicolas says. “But we decided that instead of reinventing the wheel, we would deal with existing equipment and control it better.”

Their more practical solution involves sensors placed inside the refrigerator wired to a controller mounted on the outside. The controller monitors the temperature and adjusts it to a fine degree by literally turning the power to the refrigerator on and off as needed. Ultimately, they plan to link the sensors and controller wirelessly.

The heart of the system is a Raspberry Pi, a complete computer that costs only $35 and can output data to a monitor and be programmed with a keyboard and mouse.

“Generally for this sort of control system, we’d use a microcontroller rather than a full CPU,” Mrozack says. He said the computer they’re using is “much easier for prototyping and programming.”

The computer was flexible enough to allow the team to incorporate the vaccine-tracking system that prints bar code stickers for every box in a refrigerator. When nurses remove vaccines for use, they scan the box and the system prints the necessary paperwork.

Martin de Nicolas and Chester plan to stay on after graduation to prepare a functional prototype for testing this summer. They also plan to develop a power backup system that McColloster says will be especially useful in areas prone to brownouts and blackouts.

“I’ve been working on this type of problem for 20 years,” says McColloster, who sees potential for the device in developing countries as well. “Thank God (for) this program with Oden.”

Source: Rice University


Filed Under: Drug Discovery

 

Related Articles Read More >

Zoliflodacin wins FDA nod for treatment of gonorrhea
FDA approved ENFLONSIA for the prevention of RSV in Infants
First clinical study results of Dupixent for atopic dermatitis in patients with darker skin tones 
Labcorp widens precision oncology toolkit, aims to speed drug-trial enrollment
“ddd
EXPAND YOUR KNOWLEDGE AND STAY CONNECTED
Get the latest news and trends happening now in the drug discovery and development industry.

MEDTECH 100 INDEX

Medtech 100 logo
Market Summary > Current Price
The MedTech 100 is a financial index calculated using the BIG100 companies covered in Medical Design and Outsourcing.
Drug Discovery and Development
  • MassDevice
  • DeviceTalks
  • Medtech100 Index
  • Medical Design Sourcing
  • Medical Design & Outsourcing
  • Medical Tubing + Extrusion
  • Subscribe to our E-Newsletter
  • Contact Us
  • About Us
  • R&D World
  • Drug Delivery Business News
  • Pharmaceutical Processing World

Copyright © 2025 WTWH Media LLC. All Rights Reserved. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of WTWH Media
Privacy Policy | Advertising | About Us

Search Drug Discovery & Development

  • Home Drug Discovery and Development
  • Drug Discovery
  • Women in Pharma and Biotech
  • Oncology
  • Neurological Disease
  • Infectious Disease
  • Resources
    • Video features
    • Podcast
    • Voices
    • Webinars
  • Pharma 50
    • 2025 Pharma 50
    • 2024 Pharma 50
    • 2023 Pharma 50
    • 2022 Pharma 50
    • 2021 Pharma 50
  • Advertise
  • SUBSCRIBE