Pandemics such as COVID-19 pandemic cause a significant loss of human life around the world, and they constitute a very big challenge to public health. Lack of efficient and well-monitored vaccination systems leads to people’s death and impact the economy of individuals and of the country in general. Some vaccines are temperature-sensitive, therefore, storing and delivering the vaccination to rural remote area in suboptimal conditions reduces their efficacy or even spoil the vaccine. Currently, monitoring of these vaccines is done manually and this is unreliable, making it impossible to know if their effectiveness has deteriorated by the time they are injected in individuals. This research project has been conducted with the objective of developing an Internet of Things Remote Monitoring Solution (IoT RMS) to provide a real-time monitoring of storage and delivery of these temperature-sensitive vaccines together with the ability to alert whenever there is an issue. The methodology used consists of gathering information about the currently used cold chain systems, the types of systems used, their problems, and the needs in locally produced monitoring product. Questionnaires and One- on-one interviews with people directly linked with vaccine cold chain have been conducted to quickly map concepts and develop the cold chain IoT RMS product. Lack of power back up, fuel, maintenance tools, lack of skills development trainings to cold chain technicians, manual temperature data recording and lack of cold chain remote monitoring tools were the main challenges reported. Sensors, Microcontroller Units, wireless communication technology and user interface have been connected together and configured to produce a prototype of an IoT RMS system. Test results proved that the designed system will be a suitable solution to the existing cold chain challenges. To maintain efficient and accurate cold chain systems the research thesis recommends that cold chain technicians should be continuously trained, standby generators should be installed and regularly maintained, IoT RMS solution should be adopted.

Keywords: Cold chain, IoT RMS, COVID-19, Vaccine Storage, Vaccine Delivery, Web App.