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Intelligent Devices Inc., a subsidiary of Information Mediary Corp (IMC), in partnership with Evidencia LLP and Prodecom, announce that the entire line of Log-ic ThermAssureRF devices have received EN12830, IP68, and COFRAC certifications from the French Institute Cemafroid, a United Nations- and World Health Organization (WHO)-authorized testing and certification laboratory.

Who should read this?
These rules apply to all businesses that make, transport (including by rail), store or sell quick frozen foodstuffs (QFF). The rules apply to QFF only if they are labelled as ‘quick-frozen’ (which is optional). They do not apply to ice cream or edible ice.

New international standards no longer require directly observed therapy for all tuberculosis (TB) patients, but state that practitioners must be capable of assessing adherence and addressing poor adherence. Massproduced electronic medication monitors, which record removal of medication from a container, could help overcome the problem of assessing treatment adherence accurately even in poor countries. Both health facilities and community workers could dispense drugs for self-administered treatment in medication monitors and retrieve the adherence record with inexpensive built-in displays. These devices could keep the adherence record from the beginning of therapy for managing patients who move. Pharmacists using medication monitors could provide surveillance of self-administered treatment prescribed by private physicians with less adherent patients referred to the health departments. Less adherent patients could be managed with focused counselling, directly observed therapy when necessary, and extensions in treatment duration. Removal of the directly observed therapy burden would encourage patients to seek free high-quality supervised pubic care and help expand effective TB treatment services. If resources saved by giving less directly observed therapy were focused on poorly adherent patients, medication monitor-based programmes could create less acquired drug resistance than overwhelmed treatment programmes that attempt but fail to give uninterrupted directly observed therapy to all patients.

According to a recent informal poll of Healthcare Packaging (HCP) readers, half the respondents agreed that packaging should enter the stream at the beginning of the clinical trial. An encouraging number, considering the metamorphosis the primary package will likely undergo as the drug formulation continues to change during the course of the trial.

While some companies may be actively seeking the value proposition of RFID implementation, others have discovered that the value proposition already exists in applications utilizing active RFID.

Active, passive RFID tags free the cold chain from wires.

This new publication will cover such technologies as insulating materials and containers, phase-change materials, smart labels and sensors, desiccants, returnable notes and pallets, tamper-evident cases, specialty logistics services, and more.

The outcome of this study should help programs determine the most appropriate interventions. If evidence demonstrates, for example, that freezing occurs most commonly during vaccine transport, new procedures for conditioning of ice packs, or ice-free transport can be implemented. If there is a correlation between specific types of refrigerators and freezing, equipment replacement may be required or, alternatively, more attention given to the training of cold chain supervisors.

To identify risk factors associated with relapse among cured tuberculosis (TB) patients in a DOTS programme in South India.

Sixty years after the introduction of effective chemotherapy, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates, based on surveillance and survey data, that the number of new tuberculosis (TB) cases has reached 8.9 million in 2004, with an annual rate increase of 0.6%...