Vaccine potency, meaning its ability to adequately protect the vaccinated patient can diminish when the vaccine is exposed to adverse conditions. Once lost, vaccine potency cannot be regained. To be able to track vaccines during their journey and obtain all the information required about every single dose, and support the global fight against the COVID-19 pandemic at the same time, we have created Vaccine Cold Chain – a solution that ensures fully monitored vaccine transport processes.
Challenge
Our pandemic-ridden world saw a much-needed glimpse of hope in the invention of COVID-19 vaccines. The troubles were far from over, however, as one immense challenge remained: the vaccines had to be distributed all around the globe, and the specific conditions required for their transportation did not facilitate the task.
At xBerry, we understand that tech companies possess a unique capability to solve such issues, as well as social responsibility when it comes to helping the world of science in times of need. That’s why we designed a system that allows for a safer and more efficient distribution of vaccines — Vaccine Cold Chain.
Goals
Vaccines are sensitive biological products. Some vaccines are sensitive to freezing, some to heat, and others to light.
Vaccine potency, meaning its ability to adequately protect the vaccinated patient, can diminish when the vaccine is exposed to the wrong temperatures. Once lost, vaccine potency cannot be regained. Our goal was clear – we needed to create a system that would track vaccines’ journey on every level, allowing distributors to maintain product quality by protecting it from temperature extremes.
The safety of vaccines is ensured by various security measures, including special packaging, access control measures, cameras and – most importantly in this case – temperature sensors. To provide continuous and fully automated supervision of every single vaccine dose, we needed to devise a complex control system that would ensure safe delivery from the factory to the doctor’s office.
Solution
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Our solution was a part of a very complex production system, where the most crucial factors are high performance and reliability. Therefore C++ was an obvious choice for this task.
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We based our solution on reading and writing high-frequency RFID tags and QR codes. This kind of low-level operation is handled most efficiently with C++.
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As the system requires a production employee to use HMI to control the whole process , we decided to pick one of the most popular and best-rated frameworks for GUI creation – Qt.
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One of the responsibilities of the product was to communicate with the Cloud to share statistics gathered during the production process. Qt made this task easy.
Results
We have created a solution based on the high-frequency RFID tags and QR codes attached to every vaccine container. They not only give us information about the quantity but also necessary details such as the type of vaccine, its production date, and the date of posting. Moreover, the tags were connected to the data loggers and could be identified and tracked through the whole transportation route to provide a full history of environmental data, such as temperature or level of UV radiation.
We also installed special modules with dedicated antennas at every critical point of the route: the production line, factory gates, logistic centers, and status checkers at medical centers. Each of these points is connected to the cloud-based centralized database and automatically notifies the operator when any environmental issue is detected. This, in turn, helps avoid damage and safely transport the vaccines to their final destination — the medical professionals’ offices.
The solution turned out to be fully functional and automatic – it ensured fully monitored vaccine transport processes. And it has been tested by one of the largest vaccine manufacturers in Europe. We truly believe that this is an ideal solution for these rough times!