Blood and organs stay chilled with new temperature and GPS tracking service

A new service has been launched to ensure that blood and organs being transported by medical services stay within strict temperature thresholds – wirelessly and automatically.

Bio-Trak monitors the temperature and GPS-tracked location of precious human tissue every second during transport, ensuring it stays in the best possible condition.

Hospitals waiting for deliveries are automatically alerted to imminent arrivals, helping to speed up transfer times.

And the entire journey has a full audit trail using accredited systems, meeting "Good Distribution Practice" for transport required by the Blood Safety and Quality Regulations 2005.

The new Bio-Trak service is a joint venture between three companies:

VeriLocation, the UK’s leading GPS tracking and vehicle telematics company
RAG automated temperature monitoring
Lab3 laboratory services

"All goods in transit are fitted with Radio Frequency ID (RFID) tags," explained VeriLocation’s Andrew Overton.

"That makes the reporting automatic without any need to drill holes in cold storage areas of vehicles. The RFID tags can be read even through thick plastic boxes with no wires or need to physically scan anything.

"The tags report the ambient and core temperature of goods being transported, and this information plus the GPS location of the vehicle is sent over the mobile phone data networks every second."

It means that the progress of the journey plus the temperature can be monitored by anyone with a computer connected to the internet.

A full accredited audit trail is automatically created. And any breach of temperature thresholds raises an automatic alarm.

The technologies were initially combined for use in the food transportation industry.

This new service adds a significant level of extra protection for the transportation of irreplaceable, temperature-sensitive materials.