One of the UK's top transplant centres, the Harefield Hospital in Middlesex, has just placed an order for temperature monitoring system from Monitherm
The temperature monitoring system is bound for the Transplant Immunology and Tissue Typing departments in the hospital's pioneering Heart Science Centre, and should be operational within four to six weeks.
Monitherm is a relatively new company, set up a little over a year ago and while there are a number of hard-wired monitoring systems available commercially it is the only one to offer a wire-free system with the range and capabilities required in a modern laboratory environment. Managing director Jim Fleming explained: "Recent changes in legislation governing the licence-free use of frequencies and transmitter strengths previously reserved for military use, have allowed us to develop our new MLS2000 system." "It is based on a number of remote sensors 'reporting back' to a central, base-station PC.
These have a normal range of up to 250m from the receiver and a maximum of 128 sensors can be incorporated within a single system." The installation at Harefield is for an initial 17 sensor / probes, but the intention is very much for it to be expanded over time and in a number of different stages, possibly to include other departments within the hospital.
The system at Harefield has been specially designed to check temperature and oxygen concentration within tissue culture incubators and specimen storage freezers, where it is absolutely vital to be able to measure and record this information, regularly and accurately, and have the ability to raise the alarm if something should go awry.
Measurement of relative humidity, carbon dioxide, light levels, and pressure are also all possible on the same system." Neil Leaver is the principal clinical scientist in the Transplant Immunology Department at Harefield Hospital and has been instrumental in acquiring the MLS2000 for his department.
The temperature monitoring had previously been done manually, which is time consuming and liable to human error so the decision was made some time ago to move to an automated system.
The system is going into an existing, working department so the requirement was for something that was going to be quick and easy to install.
Under laboratory conditions where there may be sensitive, on-going experiments, it is important to keep disruption to a minimum and there are some obvious problems with hammering and drilling if you have to run hard-wire cabling.
They also wanted a system that was portable and flexible: where the sensors could follow the equipment around if it needed to be moved from one location to another and where it could be expanded as and when the need arose.
Monitherm's MLS2000 met all their 0operational criteria.
