How to Prepare for Future Vaccine Demand
One lesson that vaccine manufacturers and suppliers learned in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic is that preparing for vaccine demand is critical for public health initiatives. If hospitals and clinics are only beginning to consider their vaccine storage and supply when demand is high, they are already behind. Getting ahead of vaccine supplies and storage capabilities is paramount. Even preparing for annual influxes of vaccine demand — such as during cold and flu season — is important to do so far enough ahead of time. In order to keep up with public health initiatives, clinics, hospitals and vaccine manufacturers need to begin preparing for future vaccine demand by considering many strategies.
Expand Storage Capacity
Vaccine storage supply is one of the more significant factors in achieving key public health initiatives and delivering vaccines to patients when they need them. Having the right vaccine supply on hand is critical. Before your healthcare facility faces another public health crisis where vaccines are in high demand, expand your vaccine storage capacity.
Without being able to hold stock in facilities, vaccine quantities are necessarily reduced in those clinics and hospitals. Consider the space in your facility and how it can better and more safely store vaccines and other critical medicines. In order to comply with public health initiatives, vaccine storage needs to maintain certain temperatures to ensure the quality and efficacy of the medicine.
A remote temperature sensor offers compliance, security and peace of mind when you need to maintain vaccine storage facilities. As your hospital or clinic strategizes ways to prepare for future demand and grows in size, consider how a remote temperature sensor can set your facility up for success down the road. Waiting to include these necessary compliance measurements until demand is high will disrupt the public health initiatives, and can put you and your patients at risk.
Diversify Your Supply Chain Portfolio
Relying on a single vaccine supplier or manufacturer can be detrimental to your eventual vaccine storage unit and supply. When demand is high, manufacturing vaccines may be difficult for some facilities, while others may be better equipped to handle larger public health initiatives. Partner with a variety of manufacturers and agencies to diversify your supply chain and receive the essential vaccines you need, when you need them.
Agencies such as COVAX, UNICEF and the WHO commit to supplying vaccines to populations around the world, and can help determine a vaccine supply strategy for your facility. Partnering with these organizations and others that are similar can position your clinic and hospital for success when patients are looking for vaccines.
Create a Plan
Does your healthcare facility have a vaccine strategy? Creating a plan ahead of time can benefit your patients, nurses and doctors as illnesses and diseases come through. Effective strategies have plans laid out for increased vaccine storage, ensuring you have at least one remote temperature sensor in each refrigerator to maintain the quality, and a distribution plan that will deliver those vaccines into the arms of patients in a reasonable period of time.
Review your plan monthly or quarterly to ensure it is up-to-date and in line with local, state and federal guidelines. For example, consider how adding a remote temperature sensor that sends alarms to your phone can more reliably keep you up-to-date with the status of your vaccine supply.
When healthcare facilities have a plan in place for future vaccine demand, they can deliver better patient care when the public needs it most.
Protect Your Current and Future Vaccine Supply
Vaccines and immunizations are essential for public health initiatives as well as keeping local populations and communities safe and healthy. As the clinic or hospital that is responsible for delivering vaccines, you need to ensure you are taking precautions and making plans to keep your existing supply safe, and preparing for future vaccine demands. Every year, patients need to update their immunizations, and when large-scale public health crises strike, effective and safe vaccines become even more important. With a remote temperature sensor and other key vaccine supply strategies, your facility can be confident that you are prepared for future vaccine needs.
Looking to update to a remote temperature sensor or other vaccine storage monitoring tools? Shop data loggers and give your healthcare facility peace of mind for the long-term needs of your patients.
