ER Systems SA announced the successful commissioning of a new automated temperature monitoring solution for hospital kitchens.
This new solution has been developed in partnership with Identec Solutions, an IDENTEC GROUP sister company, and Modularways, a German SME specialised in healthcare workflow management. The first roll-out has now been successfully implemented in a Bavarian hospital in the south of Germany.
Klinikum Oettingen has its own hospital kitchen that serves not only local patients and staff, but also some remote elderly care homes and schools. “The issue for the customer was, that he could not make sure the food transport boxes were delivered at the right temperature to the remote sites,” explains Swen Walter, sales manager at Modularways. “The responsibility of the kitchen chef was at stake every day; because he could not prove that the food was handed over according to the HACCP hygiene regulations.”
Identec Solutions wireless active RFID tags with temperature logging functionality have now been installed in the refrigerators and food transport boxes of the hospital, enabling automated tracking and documentations of the whole process. The kitchen chef has real time access to temperature history and alarms directly from the web portal of Modularways, enabling him full visibility of his delivery process.
Simon Prior, Product Manager Identec Solutions explains: “The challenge we had was to create a tag that would be approved for contact with food and could withstand the harsh environment inside the transport boxes and refrigerators (-40°C + 85°C). We also had to ensure that a temperature could be logged every 60 seconds and over a huge temperature range for more than 36 hours without losing any data.”
ER Systems accomplished the integration of the tags and software by using it’s expertise from similar projects. The business logic was intensively discussed with the end customer to make sure it fitted 100% of his daily work. It was important to make sure that the current processes were not disrupted in any way.
"The release of Modularways real time management system is an excellent example of how effectively Identec Solutions SensorSMART Platform can be leveraged for third party application development," states Gerhard Schedler, President and CEO Identec Solutions. "Simply put, SensorSMART is designed to offer enriched functionality and unwavering reliability when and where other networks cannot."
Both Identec Solutions and ER Systems are member companies of IDENTEC GROUP, the leading global RFID Solutions provider, whose strategy is to promote technology, marketing, operational and financial cross-fertilization among its RFID companies, as well as to fuel the growth of member companies in vertical markets. Group companies today serve more than 2000 customers in 16 industries on all continents.
“This project shows another example of successful cross-fertilization inside the IDENTEC GROUP”, explains Tobias Britz, CEO of ER Systems SA. “We realised a vertical solution by leveraging the direct contact of Modularways with the end user and by selecting the most appropriate technology on the market from Identec Solutions. We are now looking forward to duplicate this solution to many of Modularways’ customers.”
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