Environmental Monitoring for a Leading US Laboratory

About the Client

A premier US-based diagnostics laboratory, certified under CAP and CLIA, operates in a highly regulated environment with stringent quality and compliance requirements. These certifications demand precise environmental control and detailed documentation, including annual audits that assess conditions affecting all equipment, reagents, and experiments.

Problem

The laboratory faced several critical challenges that impacted compliance, operations, and financial performance:

• Lack of Real-Time Visibility & Location Awareness
  Alerts from environmental sensors referenced only serial numbers or freezer names—offering no clear indication of where the issue was occurring. This created confusion and slowed down technician response, especially among new hires.
• Frequent Financial Losses from Environmental Failures
  Failures in temperature and humidity control caused degradation of sensitive reagents, resulting in recurring losses totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars.
• Manual and Inefficient Compliance Reporting
  Quality control personnel had to manually compile environmental metrics to assess potential root causes of failed experiments. This process was time-consuming and delayed corrective action.
• Difficulty Identifying Root Cause of Failures
  It was often unclear whether experiment failures were due to environmental conditions or human error, leading to misalignment with leadership and difficulty in driving improvements.
• Scalability Constraints
  With more than 300 instruments spread across two buildings and a small QC team of just four people, the lab couldn’t adequately monitor conditions—especially during off-hours and overnight shifts.

Solution

The lab implemented Hopara to modernize environmental monitoring and reduce risk. Key components of the solution included:

• Interactive Facility Map
  Hopara created a real-time visual map of all rooms and equipment, enabling staff to instantly identify the location of any alert.
• Live Temperature & Humidity Monitoring
  The platform integrated with the lab’s existing sensors to display real-time environmental data for all assets, including freezers, refrigerators, ovens, and rooms.
• Configurable Alerts with Visual Feedback
  Custom thresholds were applied to monitored assets. When limits were exceeded, Hopara flagged the issue visually and stored threshold breach data for later analysis.
• Multi-Asset & Multi-Room Dashboards
  Custom dashboards allowed users to compare environmental conditions across rooms and devices, overlay external temperature data, and filter views for faster troubleshooting.
• Historical Data Analysis
  Time-based filtering allowed the team to review environmental data over specific periods and correlate it with experiment results.
• Okta SSO Integration
  Secure single sign-on allowed team members to access the platform from computers, tablets, or mobile devices—wherever they were.
• Tailored Implementation
  Hopara’s team worked closely with the lab to customize the platform to their operational and compliance needs, ensuring seamless adoption.

Result

The implementation of Hopara led to significant quantifiable and qualitative benefits for the lab:

• Prevention of Significant Financial Losses: By enabling quick response to out-of-range conditions, the product prevents the degradation of expensive reagents, saving “hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
• Improved Operational Efficiency and Resource Allocation: The small QC team can effectively monitor a large number of instruments across two buildings, including overnight issues, without needing to physically inspect every location. Supervisors and other personnel can check lab conditions from their computers, eliminating unnecessary trips to the lab.

Client Testimonial

“You make my life so much easier with this solution. I tell everyone – I’m like a big promoter. A lot of people have been really impressed. Even some of the vendors we work with – they’ll walk in and ask, ‘What is that?’”

—Melissa, Quality Assurance Manager, CAP CLIA Certified Laboratory