Customer Story

Modernizing hospital operations: IoT solutions for optimal cold storage management

Challenges

A prominent Northwest hospital network chose EPIC iOs IoT Healthcare Solutions to streamline the monitoring and management of its pharmaceutical-grade cold storage units across 10 hospitals.

Tasked with hosting a variety of biopharmaceuticals, blood, and vaccines, monitoring the hospitals’ 100+ cold storage units using IoT allows the hospitals to achieve compliance and real-time insight at significant cost and resource savings.

Specific challenges that the hospital network addressed with EPIC iO include:

  • Streamline Reporting

    Streamline the reporting and monitoring of the cold storage units by hospital personnel

  • Holistic Management

    Achieve holistic management of multiple storage units across the network of hospital

  • Productivity

    Improve labor productivity of hospital personnel

  • Remote Management

    Achieve remote access, management and control of the individual storage units

  • Environmental Monitoring

    Monitor the health of the air conditioning units that service the storage units

  • Reporting Compliance

    Attain regulatory compliance related to the reporting

  • Cost Effective Solution

    Achieve return on investments (ROI) through financial benefits and cost savings

The Solution

Multifaceted in nature, the hospitals’ cold storage units require a flexible IoT-based solution that supports their key initiatives, including real-time sensor readings, intuitive monitoring and reporting, and enhanced remote management.

The hospitals’ adoption of an LTE-based IoT solution by IntelliSite provides them with a flexible platform and the ability to add additional services in the future, including security and surveillance.

IntelliSite delivered a solution that is built atop wireless market leader Cradlepoint’s Gigabit LTE solution. Cradlepoint provides an LTE-equipped cellular solution that is plug and play, cost-effective, and low maintenance. Specifically, EPIC iO provided the hospital with a powerful solution that was built around Cradlepoint’s COR IBR900 and NetCloud Manager. Cradlepoint IBR series routers provide the hospitals with a reliable solution that, coupled with cloud management, delivers increased bandwidth and control in a secure environment.

The EPIC iO IoT for Cold Storage solution provides the hospitals:

Cradlepoint’s Elastic Edge, a pervasive software driven wireless WAN based on LTE

Cloud management of LTE routers and easy provisioning

Ability to use LAN as primary connection with LTE as fail-over

Cradlepoint’s Secure Threat Management, a comprehensive intrusion detection system

Outcomes

The hospitals’ use of LTE wireless technology to monitor the cold storage units provide real-time analytics concerning the various temperatures and health of the cooling systems themselves. Now equipped with an always-on connection for consistent telemetry and real-time reporting, the hospitals measure success in three ways:

This combination of services strengthens the hospitals’ operational efficiency and further improves patient care. EPIC iO’s ability to manage the dispersed locations through a “single pane” of glass allows each hospital to remotely identify and resolve issues and create operational transparency that extends across the entire network of hospitals.

  • Monitoring

    Effortlessly monitor essential and reliable temperature data so that any variation, no matter how small, can be tracked.

  • Compliance

    The hospitals can meet FDA regulatory requirements and reduce the risk of non-compliance with continuous monitoring and digital logs.

  • Protection

    With enhanced insight, the hospitals can streamline corrective actions and unify processes when excursions occur to reduce or eliminate the risk of asset loss.

“The introduction of IoT to monitor our cold storage units are a critical step to modernizing our storage, streamlining our processes and allowing us to better serve our patients. EPIC iO’s IoT solution has already generated a significant ROI and we are continuing to look at how we can leverage IoT into other aspects of our hospital operations.”

- Director of Technology at the Northwest Hospital & Medical Center