Hawaii DOH tells providers how and when to retrieve vaccine temperature data, stresses fast reporting of excursions

Kealohi Kreplus, the presenter for the Hawaii Department of Health Vaccines for Children (VFC) Program, told providers during an Aug. 20 webinar that DDLs — "DDL stands for your digital data logger" — must provide a comprehensive daily record and be submitted to the program for routine monthly logs and any temperature excursions.

The guidance is aimed at ensuring vaccines distributed to VFC-eligible children remain viable. "If an excursion is found, providers are going to have to download their data, analyze it for any out of range temperatures and submit the data to the VFC program," Kreplus said. She told attendees that providers should routinely download DDL data every two weeks and immediately after any alarm, unexpected closure or when requested by the QA team.

Why it matters: temperature excursions can compromise vaccine viability and create delays in vaccine orders or administration. Kreplus gave examples from several monitoring systems used in Hawaii and described the follow-up steps required when excursions occur, including troubleshooting, contacting the manufacturer for vaccine-viability clearance and submitting five days of stable DDL data so the program can clear the unit and the vaccine.

Kreplus walked through retrieval and submission methods for the common systems used in Hawaii. For Berlinger FridgeTag units, providers detach the monitor and plug its USB into a computer to open the device PDF; if Adobe does not support the file, she advised using a browser such as Microsoft Edge or Firefox and contacting facility IT if USB access is blocked. "For temperature excursions that pop up on the Fridge Tag...a member of the QA team is going to request that you download your data," she said.

For Senso Scientific users (the webinar transcript included several alternate transcriptions of the vendor name), Kreplus said the program accepts monthly, graph, daily or weekly reports generated from the cloud account; she cautioned that "audit node" reports sometimes show historic out-of-range values that were never cleared by the user and recommended attaching the monthly report to clarify anomalies.

AccuVax/AccuShelf users access data via the AccuSite portal to generate detailed temperature or graph reports. In one AccuVax example Kreplus cited, the day's minimum temperature was 11.2°C and the maximum 18.5°C — both outside the typical 2°C–8°C range for fridge units — prompting full excursion follow-up.

The VFC program also changed manual-log expectations: manual temperature logs must include the actual temperature (not an "X"), staff initials, and morning and afternoon times with at least one min/max reading per workday. Kreplus warned that failing to reset a monitor's min/max can cause repeated identical readings on the manual log, which can mask real fluctuations.

Technical and administrative reminders included: use a single primary DDL system (backup systems are acceptable but may trigger follow-up if either detects an excursion), ensure DDLs have valid certificates of calibration (typical interval ~two years), place probes centrally in storage units for accurate readings, and retain all VFC-related DDL documents for at least three years as per VFC record-retention requirements.

Lorraine Lim, a VFC quality-assurance assessor who opened and closed the webinar, noted the session will be recorded and posted on the VFC website under Education Opportunities, and she encouraged attendees to complete a satisfaction survey linked in the chat so the program can plan future topics.

The program offered contact points for registry (HIRA) questions, general immunization inquiries, QA team questions, and vaccine-ordering support; Kreplus said providers should use those channels for case-specific follow-up.