Temperature Sensitive

Temptime aims to protect individuals from temperature-damaged medical products.

By Anthony Bucci, Assistant Editor On Apr 4, 2016

For nearly 30 years in the Garden State, Temptime Corporation has been developing and manufacturing time-temperature indicators for the healthcare industry.

The Morris Plains-based company produces 20 different categories of its main product HEATmarker® – temperature sensitive indicators that are manufactured and printed with a special kind of ink to help monitor temperature profiles of various types of vaccines.

“Our HEATmarker® Vaccine Vial Monitors are produced to match the profiles of different vaccines manufactured by companies around the world,” says Renaat Van den Hooff, Temptime president and CEO. “They are usually placed on the top of vaccine vials or on custom labels and are designed with a white square in the middle that will progressively darken to signal heat exposure to let healthcare workers know if a vaccine is good to use or not.”

A few of the company’s other products include FREEZEmarker® indicators that irreversibly change from green to white opaque/cloudy to signal if a product has been frozen and TransTracker® Heat Indicator cards that monitor the temperature exposure of medical products during shipping.

Temptime’s 55,000-square-foot facility is loaded with state-of-the-art equipment, including printers, presses and R&D offices to aid its 80 employees in the developing and manufacturing of its products. According to Van den Hooff, more than 600-million HEATmarker devices are used per year and 90 percent of the company’s products are exported to other countries. Its customers include Merck, Pfizer, GSK, Novartis and many others.

Moving forward, the company is headed into the electronic technology space and is currently piloting its MedTracker® innovation. “We created technology that can read our HEATmarker indicators with an iPhone application,” says Ted Prusik, co-founder of Temptime and senior vice president of life sciences. “For instance, vaccines will have a barcode that when scanned, can provide information like the authenticity and the expiration date, and can read our HEATmarker, as well. Additionally, we are innovating electronic and wireless technologies that can be used to monitor temperature in facilities and electronically in real-time during product shipment.”

“Not only are we a full-service temperature monitoring company, but we are advocates for temperature indicators to be mandated on all vaccines in every country,” Van den Hooff says. “Right now, they are not being used on all vaccines in the US or Europe. … Do we want to sell more products? Yes, of course. However, we want to protect people from damaged vaccines, blood and other medical products, and the methods for doing that today aren’t foolproof. What we can offer is a layer of added protection. Our products are so complex, yet they are so simple.”

 

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