AbhilekhBlood banks & transfusion · 2–6 °C · ≤ −30 °C · 20–24 °CBlood bank and blood component storage monitoring
A blood bank runs three different temperature bands in one room, and every one of them has a separate legal limit, a separate failure mode, and the same consequence if it slips.
Blood component storage is unusual: a single department maintains whole blood and red cells at 2–6 °C, fresh frozen plasma at −30 °C or below, and platelets at 20–24 °C under continuous agitation. Three bands, three sets of equipment, three alarm philosophies — and in most facilities, three different logbooks.
The clinical stakes remove any tolerance for a gap in the record. A refrigerator that drifts to 8 °C shortens red-cell viability; a platelet agitator that stops is a contamination risk within hours; a plasma freezer that reaches −20 °C compromises labile clotting factors. Each of these is a discard decision that has to be defensible from the record alone, often months later.
Abhilekh puts all three bands into one fleet view. The same instruments and the same audit chain cover the refrigerator, the freezer and the agitator room, so the department has one system to validate, one calibration programme to run, and one report to hand an inspector.
The expectations behind the record
What an inspector or auditor looks for in this use case, and the framework each expectation comes from.
Storage bands defined per component, monitored continuously
Whole blood and red cells at 2–6 °C, fresh frozen plasma at −30 °C or below, and platelets at 20–24 °C with continuous gentle agitation. Each requires continuous temperature monitoring with an audible alarm and a recorded history.
Alarms that alert before the product is compromised
Alarm set points are placed inside the storage limits so staff can respond before the band is actually breached, with escalation to someone who can act out of hours.
A 24-hour recorder independent of the unit's own controller
The controller that holds the temperature should not be the only thing that reports it. Independent monitoring is what turns a control loop into evidence.
Records retained and retrievable for the statutory period
Monitoring records, alarm events and the assessment of each excursion are retained with the donation and issue records they relate to, retrievable in readable form for the retention period.
The failure modes nobody budgets for
Every one of these is a real reason monitoring programmes lose their audit trail — or lose the trust of the people who work with them.
Three bands, three logbooks, one inspection
Separate charts for the fridge, the freezer and the agitator make cross-checking a manual exercise, and the one that gets skipped is always the one the inspector picks.
Chart recorders that run out of paper on a Sunday
Circular chart recorders are still common and still fail silently. A missing chart week is an unprovable week.
Agitator failure that temperature alone does not reveal
A platelet agitator can stop while the room stays at 22 °C. Temperature monitoring passes; the product does not.
Out-of-hours response that depends on who is on shift
The alarm sounds in an empty room at 02:00. Without escalation to a phone, the first person to know is the technician who arrives at 08:00.
Engineered for this, specifically
Each point below maps to a documented platform behaviour — not a marketing promise.
All three bands in one fleet view
ABH-200-E and ABH-200 cover 2–6 °C refrigerators with buffered or cabled probe measurement, ABH-100-D handles plasma freezers with the logger outside and a Class-A PT100 inside, and ABH-200-H covers the 20–24 °C platelet room with humidity alongside temperature.
Escalation that reaches a human out of hours
Notifications route by email, SMS and push (iOS push in progress) with configurable escalation recipients and role-gated escalation, and the mobile app lets the on-call technician acknowledge and annotate from home with biometric login.
Independent of the unit's own controller
Abhilekh loggers measure with their own calibrated probes on their own timebase, so the record is independent evidence rather than a copy of what the cabinet's controller believes.
Every event lands in one audit chain
Readings, alarms, acknowledgements, assessments and e-signatures enter a single SHA-256 checksum chain with identity, timestamp and meaning of signature — across all three bands and every cabinet.
Nothing lost when the network drops
Each logger holds a CRC-checked ring of up to 409,600 readings plus a never-erased audit region, and backfills into the same chain when connectivity returns.
The ABH loggers for this job
Abhilekh runs its own logger line end to end — one manufacturer owns the chain from probe accuracy to the signed record.
- ▸PRB-PT100-3W — Class-A immersion probe for freezers and buffered fridge duty
- ▸PRB-SHT45-1M5 — cabled T+RH head for through-the-seal refrigerator monitoring
The ABH line is at the design-frozen, pre-production stage. Every battery-life, drop, thermal and IP figure is a calculated or simulated design estimate, and the regulatory marks referenced on this site are a certification roadmap — not held certificates.
Questions, answered
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