Logistical IT Support for COVID-19 Emergency Efforts

A local Medical Examiner’s office and Spruce worked together to use innovative technology to manage their overwhelming logistics during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic overwhelmed funeral parlors, mortuaries, and morgues. At the most critical time, hospitals resorted to utilizing portable refrigeration units for added storage . This Medical Examiner was challenged to find a solution for managing the deceased respectfully, while dealing with limited resources as staff were dispersed throughout the city. In such devastating circumstances, with thousands of COVID-19 victims presented in a short time, temporary holding of remains was becoming a significant challenge.

Spruce worked with the agency throughout the height of the pandemic to address their logistical needs for remote morgues, which continued to evolve as the situation in the city changed. Spruce contributed to the planning and rollout of enterprise technical solutions to monitor the refrigerated units deployed in various locations. Spruce provided solutions based on enterprise industry standards, including telematic control units enabled with a digital temperature sensor, RFID technology, and a video surveillance system.

Challenge

An office of a Chief Medical Examiner required a solution that would provide real-time measurements on the internal temperature and environments of the storage facilities, as well as power and flood monitoring. They needed to be able to access this information from any location, and on desktops as well as mobile devices. This OCME also needed the ability, in real time, to identify the current location as well as the past locations of their refrigeration units. In addition to these tracking abilities, a live monitoring system was required to access the current state of the sites at any given moment.

Solution

The Spruce Infrastructure team’s expertise in implementing these technologies provided the OCME with an integrated solution that captured and transmitted the temperature inside each refrigerated unit at regular intervals, tracked and transmitted the location and temperature of each refrigeration unit. Spruce was also able to provide an easy-to-read display of the environmental and contents of each refrigerated unit, along with temperature captures and date/time/location of when they are moved.

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