Custom Cloud-Based Solutions For Real-Time Sensor Calibration
Tailoring sensor calibration intervals to improve efficiency, minimize risk, and empower end users
Operational efficiency is a critical consideration for diagnostic, medical, and pathology laboratories, which must continuously optimize workflows, comply with regulatory requirements, mitigate risk, and prioritize patient safety at multiple overlapping steps. Environmental sensors are a mainstay for such labs, ensuring that important variables such as temperature are carefully monitored for incubators, refrigerators, cryogenic storage units, ultra-low temperature freezers, and other essential equipment.
Sensors require regular maintenance to ensure their ongoing reliability for preserving a wide range of stored samples, biological materials, reagents, and cell cultures. A sudden undetected equipment failure or gradual reduction in equipment integrity can jeopardize months of work, compromise precious samples and funding, lead to regulatory noncompliance, and negatively impact patient safety.
Appropriate sensor calibration intervals are critical to maintaining sensor accuracy so that they function reliably when and where they are needed most.
The limitations of manufacturer-stated sensor calibration intervals
Temperature sensor calibration is at the heart of responsible laboratory practices, but the limitations of manufacturer-stated preset calibration intervals or certification standards increase laboratory risk profiles and decrease overall laboratory operational efficiency. Relying on such sensor calibration recommendations does not take into account a laboratory’s specific regulatory requirements, applications, and standard operating procedures.
Moreover, manufacturer-stated calibration presets are unable to consider the specific environment in which the sensor is placed, thereby overlooking the inherent measurement drift of a specific sensor. Sensor drift begins immediately after calibration and often in unpredictable ways depending on environmental factors. This can lead to serious consequences, such as potential failed audits, compromised inventory, legal ramifications, and accreditation loss.
End users have the clearest understanding of their laboratory environment, regulatory context, and specific applications. As a result, they are in the best position to determine the optimal interval for sensor calibration, rather than the sensor manufacturer who may not have sufficient insight into these variables.
Accordingly, there is an increasing need for tailored calibration solutions that improve overall laboratory efficiency. Finding a sensor maintenance partner that can accommodate sensor calibration intervals based on the specific standard operating procedures, regulatory requirements, and laboratory environment is critical.
Addressing inefficiency with tailored calibration solutions
Swift Sensors’ cloud-based wireless temperature monitoring sensors provide continuous, automated monitoring for maximum protection of valuable samples and peace of mind for lab managers and research directors. Swift Sensors offers tailored sensor calibration solutions that address the limitations of manufacturer-stated one-size-fits-all calibration cycles by prioritizing transparency and partnership opportunities that help improve lab efficiency, workflows, risk profile, and overall patient safety.
Swift Sensors provides valuable customized options for laboratories and hospitals, including calibrating sensors onsite using accredited technicians or exchanging existing sensors with pre-calibrated sensors through manufacturer-led sensors-asas-service programs. By providing personalized sensor drift data documentation from a laboratory’s own sensor population and guidance on how to use this data in customized interval determination, Swift Sensors is leading the way as a sensor measurement assurance partner. Such data is crucial for maintaining calibration history tracking records that support long-term control chart analysis and for cultivating a calibration program that can generate essential audit records. For labs that must consider the risks to their business and the patients they serve, the importance of applying appropriate calibration procedures for specific use cases cannot be overstated. With this in mind, Swift Sensors helps empower end users, streamline workflows, minimize risk, and prioritize patient safety.
