Proper vaccine storage is crucial to help deliver on the Government’s commitment to provide high-quality vaccination service to the public. To this end, the EMSD has provided appropriate solutions to various Community Vaccination Centres (CVCs). Our team has promptly designed and developed an integrated Fridge Monitoring System (iFMS) to facilitate real-time remote monitoring of medical fridges, giving the public assurance that vaccines are stored in a suitable environment during the vaccination programme. Since the setting up of the CVCs, the monitoring system has been operating 24 hours a day, providing real-time information to multiple parties at all times and its performance has been well recognised.
The iFMS adopts the Narrow-Band Internet of Things technology, which makes use of the readily available mobile network infrastructure in Hong Kong for real-time wireless communication. The system can simultaneously monitor the operation of various vaccination centres and their associated facilities across the territory, such as monitoring the temperature of the medical fridges and their fault signals, providing real-time information on the room temperature and the power supply system of the CVCs. The system will also send out messages when necessary to inform the relevant departments for timely action. The community vaccine command centre, the EMSD Customer Service Centre and the Regional Digital Control Centre are responsible for receiving and monitoring the data, as well as providing information on emergency response procedures, sending alert messages and contact persons to the officers-in-charge at the same time.
With only one to two months from the establishment of the vaccination centres to the implementation of the vaccination programme, the project was extremely challenging. Applying the Department’s experience in the design and operation of similar system, our team were able to overcome the challenge and successfully roll out the system as committed, enabling the proper storage of the vaccines.