Manual Vs. Automated Lab Monitoring

By Gayle Wilton, Marketing Manager, Rees Scientific Corporation

The laboratory houses critical equipment—refrigerators, freezers, incubators and more—that needs to be monitored and maintained. Contained within this equipment are precious commodities such as blood, platelets, tissue and reagents all requiring support and monitoring of their own.

Manual Monitoring
Considerable risks are associated with manual environmental monitoring of equipment that stores blood products, pharmaceuticals, clinical testing supplies and food. In many cases, readings are manually taken and recorded using thermometers, gauges and simple pen and paper. Readings are inevitably subject to potential human error, despite the best of intentions. Some institutions have introduced chart recorders and data loggers to assist staff, but the time requirement of reading them and documenting the results still remains.

Automation Upsides
Automated monitoring provides a reliable, cost-effective alternative. A computerized system increases accuracy by providing continuous monitoring, centralized data collection and simplified reporting.