Case Study: RemoteM

About RemoteM

Conceived and developed entirely by PCM Systems, RemoteM is a temperature monitoring system providing a flexible, real time solution for monitoring and recording fridge temperatures. Many monitoring systems simply provide a temperature history for each fridge and not a warning of failure or malfunction; the RemoteM system goes much further.

Temperatures and temperature fluctuation data is transmitted to Cloud storage and is accessible at any time by users via an online dashboard. This data can easily be interrogated to provide full reports on the condition and temperature range within each fridge, and users can call up and print records for compliance and regulatory purposes. In addition, real time alarms are provided to one or multiple recipients, using email, automated voice calls or SMS, ensuring that corrective action can be taken before any losses are incurred.

The background to the development of RemoteM

Founded in 1988, PCM Systems has established a reputation for designing and implementing IT solutions for clients in a wide range of markets, serving customers in sectors as diverse as brewing, builders’ merchants, architects and surveyors, finance and electrical systems.

Alongside this work, PCM is growing a reputation as an innovator, bringing to market a line of products designed and developed in-house to monitor ambient and refrigerator temperatures, providing fail safe solutions for the storage of medicines and other products, serving veterinary science and increasingly the human healthcare market.

Bringing the RemoteM product to market

The PCM team first identified a gap in the market for a reliable temperature monitoring system capable of providing real time alerts in the event of equipment failure or human error. The company put resource into researching potential solutions, using the team’s existing skills in areas including IT, administration and data backup.

Two years of R&D and extensive field trials followed, addressing a range of challenges including developing range and power capabilities as well as practical aspects like making the devices ‘speak’ through the walls of a fridge. Using established software and project management skills, PCM addressed all aspects of product development, including researching wireless data protocols, designing and developing the circuit boards and sourcing parts and suppliers.

The protocol for capturing, transmitting and processing the data on the cloud was bespoke to this project, demanding significant levels of research and development, alongside establishing how to trigger the real time alerts which are one of the key benefits of the system.

At customer trials stage, PCM successfully introduced the system to control sites, where it was installed and monitored carefully to establish reliability and efficacy. User contributions played a further part in ensuring that data monitoring was immediate and simple through an online dashboard designed to allow easy access to, manipulation and downloading of data in report formats.

PCM Systems: committed to continuous development

Development of the RemoteM system has illustrated PCM Systems’ capabilities across a broad range of disciplines, including branding and considering how the entire project could be monetised. Today, RemoteM is used in both veterinary and human healthcare environments, safeguarding valuable medicines and vaccines and helping to ensure that maintaining the cold chain is quick, easy and reliable. Continuous development of the product to match user requirements has seen the introduction of new variants capable of monitoring product on the move.

More information is available at RemoteM.co.uk