According to the CDC, failure to store and handle vaccines properly can reduce potency, leading to inadequate immune responses in patients and poor protection against diseases.
This ultimately renders the vaccine ineffective. Whether you’re a drug manufacturer, distributor, or provider, it’s a shared responsibility among all involved to monitor and maintain proper environmental conditions and ensure vaccine efficacy for patients, and maintain CDC/VFC compliance.
The vaccine cold chain describes every step of the vaccine supply chain, each of which requires a temperature-controlled environment. The cold chain begins with the cold storage unit at the manufacturing plant, continues with transport and delivery of the vaccine, and ends with proper storage at the provider facility prior to administration to the patient.
Improper storage of vaccines can lead to unwanted conditions, including overexposure to heat, cold, or light at any step in this cold chain.
Ultimately, this results in a complete loss of vaccine usage. In fact, the CDC says that exposure to improper conditions can affect the potency of a refrigerated vaccine, but a single exposure to freezing temperatures can destroy it.
One mishap in the cold chain can mean extra doses for patients, increased costs for providers, and public mistrust about vaccine confidence.
Vaccine providers, specifically health clinics and primary care providers, are usually bound to the compliance requirements set forth by the CDC’s program, Vaccines for Children (VFC).
This is a federally funded program that provides vaccines to children who might not otherwise be able to get vaccinated because of associated costs. The CDC buys these vaccines at a discount, distributes them to grantees (usually state health departments), who then distribute them at no charge to registered VFC providers.
To become a VFC provider and receive these vaccines, organizations must maintain VFC compliance and adhere to CDC recommendations for vaccine handling and storage.
The CDC provides an exhaustive list of proper vaccine storage, vaccine inventory management, vaccine preparation, and vaccine transport.
Beginning with the drug’s manufacturing and ending with administering the vaccine to patients, there are a few key items to implement into your cold chain to ensure proper storage of vaccines and maintain VFC compliance:
Maintaining compliance can be a labor-intensive and time-consuming process if not automated by a system designed to eliminate these challenges. Sonicu provides vaccine monitoring kits for every step of the cold chain.
Our monitoring system was designed to help vaccine providers meet and exceed the requirements of the CDC, VFC program, and other regulatory agencies.
By automating vaccine monitoring, organizations not only ensure vaccine efficacy and safety, but they also unburden already busy staff from the manual processes of maintaining vaccine compliance.
Sonicu generates audit-ready compliance reports, manages sensor calibration, and makes ongoing vaccine monitoring easy. Our easy-to-use implementation wizard means that setup and installation of a Sonicu monitoring system can be done by anyone, regardless of technical expertise, within minutes!