The USA’s largest retail pharmacies are to leverage SmartSense by Digi for government-mandated continuous monitoring of any forthcoming Covid-19 vaccine.

The SmartSense temperature monitoring can protect vaccines from development to distribution across research labs, factories, warehouses, lorries and distribution outlets.

The Digi monitoring products are said to meet expected guidelines from the US Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) for handling Covid-19 vaccines. These will support the entire vaccine cold chain from manufacturers to end-point providers.

SmartSense developed its critical-environment monitoring to protect organisations and patients, providing confidence and peace of mind as the Covid-19 vaccine-delivery process evolves. Already, SmartSense technologies collect more than ten million sensor readings per day in 28,000 retail pharmacy locations and their supporting distribution centres.

“We’ve spent years developing and continuously improving SmartSense to help our customers protect their cold chain for critical, condition-sensitive inventory,” said Kevin Riley, president of SmartSense by Digi. “This has prepared our customers for the monumental challenge of storing and distributing a Covid-19 vaccine and has helped Digi build relationships with some of the largest organisations that are set to play key roles in getting the vaccine to the public.”

The CDC is expected to mandate continuous temperature monitoring for pharmacies to receive and distribute forthcoming Covid-19 vaccines. SmartSense meets this requirement by providing automated wireless-monitoring and task-management tools that not only ensure the product remains at the proper temperature, but that workers handle the inventory correctly, as well.

Critically, since SmartSense functions in any environment that requires monitoring, its sensors can monitor the cold conditions required for vaccine delivery. With many vaccine candidates requiring frozen transportation and storage, SmartSense can already support these conditions without last-minute upgrades or hardware changes.

“Our pharmacy customers have already entrusted us to protect more than $2bn in refrigerated inventory,” said Riley. “In addition, we’re also working with hospitals, clinics and transportation companies that use our technology for similar applications. SmartSense is a proven, trusted solution, and we’re proud to provide greater certainty to both our customers and the public that, when a Covid-19 vaccine is ready, it will safely and reliably reach them with full efficacy.”