FAQs

Advanced phase change materials (PCMs) are compounds that absorb, store, and release a large amount of heat at a relatively constant temperature by changing their physical state. When an advanced PCM freezes, it releases a large amount of energy as latent heat whereas, when such a material melts, it absorbs a large amount of heat from the environment. Heat stored in the materials is called latent heat, due to which, advanced PCMs are also known as latent heat storage materials. Advanced PCMs absorb and release heat by liquefying and solidifying at set temperatures. The natural latent heat property of PCMs helps in maintaining a structure’s temperature and preventing sudden external changes. Fluctuations in ambient temperature recharge advanced PCMs, making them suitable for everyday applications.

Temperature-controlled packaging (TCP) is a system where the payload being shipped is kept within a defined range of temperatures to maintain the integrity of the payload. Ambient temperatures can vary depending on the geography, so temperature-controlled packaging must be engineered to withstand the stress of extreme temperatures beside the risk of mechanical abuse.

Akuratemp will be glad to assist you in getting set up with the equipment required for providing medical courier services. We will establish standard operating procedures for conditioning cooling elements for medical courier totes, as well as provide you with smart validated medical courier totes for frozen, refrigerated, and room-temp applications. Akurasense establishes end-to-end traceability for each medical courier tote for its temperature and chain of custody until a trip is completed. We also provide you with Akurasense tools to integrate into your custom lockboxes (if permitted), which allow you to scan & sync the last 24hrs temperature data in the lockbox at the time of pickup.

We offer smart validated medical courier totes for frozen, refrigerated, and room-temp applications. Akurasense establishes end-to-end traceability for each medical courier tote, including its temperature and chain of custody, until a trip is completed. We also provide smart multi-use ISTA-validated parcel shippers for domestic overnight to 48-hour shipping of temperature-sensitive materials. These can be offered to your customer for purchase on a per-use basis.

If you are relying on procuring dry ice daily for your medical courier totes, you might be putting your couriers at risk of frostbite and respiratory challenges. Akuratemp manufactures a water-based Ice Pack and a water-based Freezer Pack that are safe and reusable alternatives for dry ice where the payload needs to stay frozen below -20C (-4F) or below 0C (32F). These packs are proprietary products manufactured by Akuratemp in North Carolina, They are tested for muti-use and 12 to 24-month life cycles. 

Akuratemp PCM Packs and IoT-enabled Akurasense Cold Chain Asset Management Technology can be applied to off-the-shelf medical courier totes. Please provide the make and model of the medical courier tote that you are using, the range of temperatures you need to maintain, the duration of the courier route, and the estimated number of openings in a typical route. We will provide you with the recommendation of which PCM Packs to use, how to condition them before starting your route, and how you can have visibility of the temperature and location of the medical courier tote during the route. This system offers the capability to receive real-time notifications in the event of temperature escalations or excursions.

If you are in the medical courier business transporting critical medical supplies or diagnostic samples, you probably already realize that on-time delivery and product integrity could be a matter of life and death for a patient. Incorporating monitoring of custody, temperature and geo-location in the medical courier totes establishes traceability for both the operator providing logistic services and the care provider so response during any adverse event can be taken promptly without compromising patient care.

Akurasense is a 21 CFR Part 11 compliant cloud-based tool engineered to manage Cold Chain Assets for Medical Laboratories. Its capability allows building an organization with multiple users and multiple locations that can operate at the same time while the system maintains a time and location-stamped digital track of each user. Each location is populated with its fixed and mobile cold chain assets that are assigned temperature, humidity and location tracking devices. These devices can be 4G or WiFi enabled for direct communication with the Akurasense Platform or Bluetooth enabled for on-demand data collection via an Akureasense Connector Application. The application allows organizations to create trips with assigned mobile devices for live tracking and notifications, while also placing fixed assets in continuous monitoring mode for generating compliance reports required while storing sensitive laboratory reagents.

The Akurasense monitoring system is an economical subscription-based tool. The organization admin and regional warehouse managers will require access to the platform for monitoring an unlimited number of cold chain assets. The sensors are replaced annually for ease of maintaining calibration and battery life. While the majority of the digital solutions on the market charge for monitoring per sensor, Akurasense is built on charging only for the users, offering a superior and economical choice.

By validating a medical courier tote and a parcel shipper, Akuratemp provides you with an assurance on what temperature control to expect when using these devices. Validation is executed using industry-recommended ambient temperature profiles, but the real ambient temperature can be different. However, this testing provides a benchmark for comparing validated products and filters validated products from unvalidated products.

The International Safe Transit Association (ISTA) provides standardized test procedures defining how packages should perform to ensure the protection of their contents. These validation procedures are used for package validations. Akuratemp owns thermal chambers and has thermal engineers on the team that design temperature-controlled packaging systems, test using digital modeling tools, and validating them in thermal chambers to provide ISTA-validated temperature-controlled packaging solutions.