The company selected the Continuum® Facility Management System with CFR Compliance Pack™ from Tour Andover Controls. The Tour Andover system, installed by ACS Montreal, plays a critical role in verifying that Hema-Quebec complies with both Canadian and United States regulations regarding the collection, screening, preparation, and delivery of blood components, says the company. The CFR Compliance Pack is an option to the Continuum system that allows Hema-Quebec to generate electronic records of environmental conditions at each facility 24 hours a day.

Created in 1998 as part of the reorganization of Canada's blood management system, Hema-Quebec collected more than 256,000 units of blood and provided blood products for more than 80,000 hospital patients in 2003. The Continuum facility management system plays a role in the proper handling of blood at all Hema-Quebec locations through monitoring and controlling the HVAC equipment of labs, cold rooms, donor centers, and offices.

The facility management system enables Hema-Quebec to comply with requirements to collect extensive data regarding the environmental parameters at the blood collection and processing facilities with integrated supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) capabilities and fault alarms for critical lab equipment and room temperature monitoring. Because the Continuum system can integrate SCADA capabilities with control and monitoring, Hema-Quebec was able to eliminate the need for a separate stand-alone data acquisition system, says the company.

"We were impressed not only by the amount of valuable experience ACS Montreal has in laboratory environmental controls," commented Luc Pelletier, Hema-Quebec's facility director, "but also that Continuum could provide us with a single integrated system for HVAC control, cold room control and monitoring, and data acquisition."

For more information, visit www.tac.com.

Publication date: 01/10/2005