Colloquia and Plans Forward

Last Tuesday, we presented to Gemstone freshmen and sophomores on the progress of our project so far.  Divya detailed the cold chain using our animation created by Vishnu Ganti at the Maryland Institute of College of Art (you can check out a low-resolution version here: http://vimeo.com/16537015).  After that, Jason went over the design criteria and plan for our ice box, and Kelly explained the CompSol diagrams.  Our presentation was well received and we got a few questions from the freshmen about materials we will eventually use to construct the ice box.  After our presentation we had a post-Colloquium celebration where we enjoyed Chipotle and then watched Harry Potter: The Goblet of Fire at Divya's place.  


On Thursday we had our usual meeting where we discussed goals for these last few weeks of the semester.  The technical team has a few questions they will look into:
-Why do vaccines need to be kept in the 2-8 degree Celsius range?  How was this range determined?
-How can we get CompSol to stop logging out during data collection?
-What other variables should be considered for our ice box experiments? 
-What other PCM's can we test?
-How can we can get vaccines to test inside the ice box?
-How can we learn from existing products to refine our design?  For example, the Greenbox model uses a small storage space and a lot of PCM to stabilize the temperature for about 28 hours.  This seems like a lot of materials used.  


By Thanksgiving we hope to do the following:
-Finish CompSol modeling
-Find new PCMs (at least 4)
-Further understand existing models like the Greenbox
-Receive colorimetric sensors samples (by end of Thanksgiving), and test them immediately when we return


The technical hopes to use the help of our Roosevelt HS student lab assistant to complete ice box experiments by the end of the semester.  Next semester we would like to compare the model with physical testing and optimize dimensions.  


The non-technical team hopes to complete the cost-analysis by Thanksgiving weekend and start working on an outline of our Gemstone thesis.  The five sections are Introduction, Literature Review, Methodology, Results, and Future Directions.  We aim to complete a draft by the end of winter break.  We hope to also get our education program off the ground next semester.  Let us know if any of you would like our team to present at your high school! 

Non-Technical Team Update

This week, the non-technical team will add to our comprehensive list of current technologies. We want to compare some of these technologies to our design criteria and see how our device will match up.

Soon we hope to look more in depth into the timeline of the cold chain to see exactly how long the vaccines take to get from one stop to the next.

What is the Cold Chain?

“This porridge is too hot!  This porridge is too cold.  Ahhh, this porridge is just right.” 

These few lines should send you on a trip down memory lane all the way to the cabin with the Three Bears.  Now replace “porridge” with “vaccine.”  You’ll find it’s not so easy to be Goldilocks.  It’s hard to figure out which vaccines are “just right” enough to inject people with.  Stored in extreme heat or extreme cold, vaccines can go bad.  Vaccines need to be at the right temperature so that they can protect people from disease. 

The cold chain is the sequence of events required to transport temperature-sensitive products through refrigerated units.  Products typically include vaccines and pharmaceutical drugs.  In fact, based on a recent study conducted by PharmaCommerce, seven of the ten top global pharmaceutical products in 2014 will require cold-chain handling.[1] The general chain is made up of five locations: manufacturing headquarters, international airport, regional ministry of health, local hospitals/clinics, and community centers.  To get from one step to the next, products are transported by plane, truck, motorcycle, or bicycle.  In rural areas where roads are not developed, they are transported by foot. 

It seems simple enough, but the task of maintaining temperature has puzzled the world for centuries.  The practice of using refrigeration dates back to 1797 when British fishermen used ice to preserve stock piles.  Shortly after in the 1870s, frozen meat was moved across oceans.  The 1950s brought companies that specifically wanted to transport pharmaceutical and medical supplies to the world.  By the 1990s, the world was literally shrinking thanks to the Internet, but there were still big distances for products to travel physically from origin to destination. 

Even today there are big differences from country to country, town to town, or city to city in terms of how the cold chain is carried out.  In underdeveloped areas where electricity is unreliable, vaccines go bad fast.  Think back to when you lose power during a thunder storm; when the storm subsides, you have to throw away all the food in your refrigerator.  The worst part is that often the vaccines are not thrown out.  Where electricity is totally unavailable, more compact ice-lined refrigerators are used to store products.  A major problem exists in using the different refrigeration equipment at every stage of the cold chain.  Health workers need to know how to monitor the vaccine temperature and what to do if something goes wrong.  Communication is key to a smooth operation. 

Making sure the cold chain is tightly regulated will be crucial to rolling out vaccines and drugs in the future.  From both an economic perspective and a human perspective, it is critical to keep improving the cold chain. 

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[1] http://www.fiercebiotech.com/press-releases/todays-global-biopharma-cold-chain-market-5-1-billion-growing-6-6-billion-2011

Today's Meeting

In this mentor meeting, we first went over relevant goals and things accomplished over the past week. Matt was able to model water in an open container on Compsol, but not phase change yet. This is a priority goal for Thursday. The sensor team believes conductivity sensing to be the best way to monitor PCM state, but color temperature sensitive labels could be another option/backup. The Ice Box experiment was started on Sunday, with data being collected continuously since. They will look over this data in the coming days.  The nontechnical team will look for real world data about how often vaccines ship, how many people are stationed at a center, and how long vaccine shipments take. This information will then be organized into a chart showing a timeline for each step of the cold chain, and we can create a mock protocol for how our container can be shipped and refrozen. The nontechnical team also started benchmarking existing products, and made a google doc with 18 current products. The technical team will look over these products, and will rate them and rank them accordingly. We plan on transferring all our google docs and files to groupspaces soon, and imbedding this blog onto our team website. We concluded this meeting by discussing upcoming goals, such as asking experts about the feasibility of our design, analyzing PCM geometries, benchmarking products, choosing a sensor, and making a detailed cost estimate. We also plan on compiling all of our archived sources.

- Sahil

Non-Technical Update...and We're Goin' Pickin'!

As Kelly mentioned, the technical team has laid out a great plan for the semester.  On the non-technical side, we've identified a few appropriate peer-reviewed journals to shoot for down the line.  Our focus moving forward will be to continue gathering more information on the nature of the cold chain.  A big question came up in our meeting with Dr. Shah this week: where is it appropriate to assume that a person will be around to check on the vaccines?  If we put in a sensor that has some kind of alarm go off, will someone be around to take the appropriate action?  Or will our PCM box sit in the middle of an airport or in a cold room unattended, allowing the vaccines to overheat/freeze?  These are the questions we'll have to consider.

The non-technical side has also started to explore all the different markets that use the cold chain.  A few we stumbled upon  were food, blood, and a whole lot of pharmaceutical products.  


Here is a startling statistic:
Based on a recent study conducted by PharmaCommerce, seven of the ten top global pharmaceutical products in 2014 will require cold-chain handling.

(You can read the full press release here.  I emailed the folks at PharmaCommerce to see if we can get a hand on the report: "Cold Chain Biopharma Logistics Sourcebook 2010")

In the next week, the team plans to gather more information on pricing of sensors, continue preparing for the ice box experiment, and research more existing cold chain technologies. And to top it all, we finally set a date for our team social: Friday, October 22nd!  We are tentatively going apple-picking (maybe pumpkin-picking would be more appropriate?)  No matter what we do, it should be a really good time!  


-Veena

Technical Update

The technical team has gotten off to a good start this semester. At our first meeting, we discussed potential PCM geometries and configurations, deciding to test variations on two general ideas: an outer lining and shelves. These will be studied both theoretically, through modeling in COMSOL, and experimentally, through our ice-insulation tests. We also touched upon the door placement - be it on the side or on the top of the box. The main debates revolved around efficiency and functionality, but we deferred this decision until it could also be confirmed through COMSOL and practical experimentation.

As an update from our last meeting, we discussed the various proposed experiments to be performed using the ice and styrofoam box assembly. We hope to find results regarding a temperature gradient with respect to depth from a cold source; determine that the PCM loses latent energy prior to the rest of the compartment decreasing in temperature; measure the temperature variation within the compartment if one side is subjected to a cold source; and determine the temperature effect if one face is left open to the ambient environment (i.e., simulating an open door).

We also began to model the geometries in COMSOL and continued research into the heat transfer modeling, specifically regarding phase change processes.

Sept 5-11

Priorities:

- NSF!!

- Meet with Dr. Shah

- Set up meeting with Roosevelt

- Each person find one grant we can apply for

PR Subgroup Goals

- Outreach

- Create a list of grants

- Education program (up and running!)

- Conferences (one Maryland, one non-Maryland)

First Post

Welcome to the Team FRESH blog! Here we will be updating our progress on our project. Feel free to leave comments and suggestions!

Team FRESH