Development of a smart monitoring system for Rwandan hospitals cold rooms. Case study: King Faisal Hospital

Abstract

Medicine and vaccines are the most important parts of disease treatment and prevention. Some temperature-sensitive medicines and vaccines must be stored in cold rooms under the WHO's recommended range of 2°C and 8°C. Because of a failure to have effective and well-monitored medicine systems, medicines lose their quality and efficacy, causing people to die and negatively impacting the economies of individuals and the country as a whole. Presently, these medicines and vaccines are monitored manually in Rwandan hospitals, for instance, King Faisal Hospital, which is untrustworthy and makes it impossible to know if their effectiveness has been negatively impacted by the time they are implanted into individuals. This study aimed to develop a smart monitoring system using IoT technology for cold rooms in Rwandan hospitals to store temperature-sensitive medicines and vaccines within the recommended range. The qualitative method was used to gather information about the cold room systems currently used at King Faisal Hospital. It required improvements to rapidly explore concepts and develop a smart monitoring system for the cold room storage of medicines and vaccines. The content analysis method was used to analyze the collected data. The study found that there are currently no remote monitoring systems and that stored medical products were damaged due to abnormal environmental temperatures and humidity. A prototype was created using microcontroller units, sensors, GSM, wireless communication technology, a relay module, and a user interface. The results demonstrated that the prototype can collect data, send it to a cloud-hosted database, display real-time data on the LCD, and send an SMS to the cold room's operator in the event of an abnormal value. The main contribution of this work is that the staff remotely monitors the cold room of medicines and vaccines rather than manually using thermometers, which presents some challenges in minimizing medicine quality loss. The designed system relied on only three parameters to detect the status of a cold room, even though many factors influence the quality of medicines. As a result, future researchers will investigate other environmental factors that can cause medicines stored in cold rooms to lose their quality.