Everyware, Hedera Hashgraph Team for NHS Blockchain Cold Chain Monitoring of COVID-19 Vaccine

January 19, 2020 

Digital asset tracking and monitoring provider Everyware and enterprise-grade blockchain provider Hedera Hashgraph, are working with an initial group of National Health Service (NHS) facilities to monitor the cold storage equipment being used to store the COVID-19 and other vaccines. The initial facilities in the South Warwickshire region adopting the technology include the Stratford Upon Avon and Warwick hospitals, with a wider rollout planned as vaccine distribution progresses.

The various COVID-19 vaccines, including the one developed by Pfizer and now approved for use in the UK, require exact degrees of cold storage at all times in order to maintain their efficacy. While centralized distribution centers and transportation units can store the vaccine at the recommended -70°C±10°C for up to 10 days unopened, they must also be stored at hospitals and other administering centers for five days at refrigerated 2-8°C conditions.

Everyware provides asset tracking and monitoring software that can be configured to monitor a number of variables, including temperature, on a 24/7 basis, from anywhere. By leveraging Everyware’s asset monitoring solution at the ‘last mile’, hospitals and healthcare facilities can ensure that vaccines are being maintained at the proper temperature throughout the entire time in their custody, before they are administered to patients. In addition, Everyware enables healthcare facilities to share information with other parts of the vaccine delivery chain – including pharmaceutical providers, centralized storage facilities, and transportation companies, to respond and adjust to any issues as they arise. Everyware’s offering already provides this service for a number of other healthcare and pharmaceutical assets, including chemotherapy and other drugs, and blood and plasma, all of which have their own unique storage requirements.

Steve Clarke, Electro BioMedical Engineering Manager at South Warwickshire NHS explained, “Everyware has already demonstrated their capability as a trusted partner, helping us monitor the integrity of a wide variety of clinical applications. As we begin to prepare the roll out of these new COVID-19 vaccines, with the specific temperature requirements, we recognise the importance of utilising their same tracking and monitoring capabilities. This, in turn, will allow us to demonstrate our commitment to providing safe patient care.”

Tom Screen, Technical Director for Everyware, said, “Monitoring the ongoing temperature of these refrigeration units is critically important, and ensuring the integrity of that data is an equally important part of maintaining trust in the results, and being able to easily share them across the entire vaccine supply chain. Hedera’s distributed ledger technology provides that tamper-proof record-keeping system, making it perfect for recording and validating results efficiently and cost-effectively. Everyware welcomes collaboration with other partners in the vaccine supply chain to ensure end-to-end traceability.”

Hedera is a decentralized public platform on which developers can build secure, fair, fast, trusted applications. The platform is governed by a council of the world's leading organizations including Avery Dennison, Boeing, Deutsche Telekom, Dentons, DLA Piper, FIS (WorldPay), Google, IBM, LG Electronics, Magalu, Nomura, Swirlds, Tata Communications, University College London (UCL), Wipro, and Zain Group.

Mance Harmon, Founder and CEO, explained how the Hedera network creates a secure, distributed base network layer for many kinds of supply chain, pharmaceutical, and healthcare services. “Hedera makes it practical and cost-effective for organizations to benefit from the transparency and accountability of distributed ledgers. Asset monitoring and management is a great example of this, and we’re so pleased to help bring that data integrity and trust to the important work that Everyware is doing with NHS hospitals in support of their emerging COVID-19 vaccination efforts.”