Healthcare, Laboratory and Treatment Center

CleanSlate

 Mobile app and simple installation prompt CleanSlate to invest in Sonicu.

Eltahir I. Elbakri worries about his aging freezers. 

Almost as much as he frets over the difficult journey his patients endure at the collection of 80 drug rehabilitation centers across North America where he helps manage laboratory activities. 

The freezers in his Massachusetts location date to the humble founding of his company’s first location. 

They're still working as advertised, but he knows from experience that can change in a flash. 

And when you consider the treatment centers store treatment drugs equal to the price of a new mid-size sedan, it’s easy to appreciate his apprehension. 

“The formula for us was not hard to understand when we began our search for a temperature monitoring system,” Elbakri said. 

“The items we store are worth many, many times more than the cost of a monitoring system, so it was not about getting a system, but what system would work best for us with 80 locations and growing across the country.” 

After conducting comprehensive research with his team, the laboratory director settled on Sonicu to conduct a pilot before scaling a solution across all of their locations.

“We started the search before COVID and then, like a lot of people, had to turn our focus to our patients and other challenges, but we knew we had to invest in better technology to protect our growing business and to be ready when the inspectors arrive,” he said.  

Today, CleanSlate Centers has completed their pilot and is investing in more monitoring capabilities to ensure they’re ready for any man-made or natural disaster as well as their regulatory obligations. 

Sophisticated enough for enterprise hospitals, but simple enough for individual clinics

Never underestimate a low-probability, high-risk threat: The lesson of a massive power outage 

We’ve all experienced the occasional power outage. 

During a freak storm. 

Or a transmission malfunction. 

But the big ones tend to be isolated. 

And they can leave a scar that demands corrective action. 

Think of the massive outage that struck New York City in 2003 during the height of summer while terrorism fears were still very fresh. 

Or the statewide Texas power and heat failure that cost dozens of lives during the harshest days of the 2021 winter. 

It’s these sort of unpredictable events that can make an investment in temperature and environmental monitoring solutions, like Sonicu, pay incalculable dividends. 

How many medications were lost during the 2003 freak power outage? 

And how much painstaking research was put at risk during the 2021 Texas outages?

It’s difficult to calculate, but experience informs Sonicu that it’s more than we care to know. 

“Every month we have a prospect call us after a freak power outage or accidental human error, like a cleaning person forgetting to plug a freezer back in, that results in a costly loss of precious assets,” said Joe Mundell, Chief Revenue Officer, Sonicu. 

“When these major events happen, it’s hard to even imagine how many healthcare and research professionals are forced to play a risky guessing game trying to determine if their assets were subject to a temperature excursion.” 

Elbakri experienced a similar event many years ago that has stuck with him as he strives to build an organization resilient enough to be ready for his clients’ challenges. 

“I will never forget this power outage that lasted a couple of days and how we had to scramble to take care of many of the drugs,” he recalled 

“Our team was getting ice packs and bags of ice and some of us were even taking stuff home to put in our freezers. It was stressful and was something you tend not to forget.”

He said a similar response today would be insufficient. 

“And the truth is today you simply couldn’t respond like that. We have safeguards in place to protect our clients and our employees that say we would simply have to toss them all if we weren’t sure they were 100 percent,” Elbarki said. 

“So it all comes back to getting a solution that meets all of our needs so it can grow across our organization.” 

He said Sonicu’s mobile app and phone call alerts were significant features that led him to select Sonicu to protect their laboratory and patients. 

The Opioid and Fentanyl Crisis: A national plague drives expansion 

Elbarki explained that the scourge of opioids has changed how his team looks at technologies to support their operations. 

Hospitals and conventional health clinics have been overwhelmed with overdoses and patients on the brink of disaster both personally and for their loved ones. 

While the government at every level has been combating the challenge for years, the scale of the problem remains stark. 

Stats provided by the Centers for Disease Control speak to the volume but not the individual pain and suffering of people suffering from addiction and their families. 

• 1.27 million Americans are now receiving medication-assisted treatment

• Naloxone is a medication designed to rapidly reverse opioid overdose. The number of prescriptions for naloxone doubled from 2017 to 2018

• In 2019, an estimated 10.1 million people aged 12 or older misused opioids in the past year. Specifically, 9.7 million people misused prescription pain relievers and 745,000 people used heroin
• Emergency department visits for opioid overdoses rose 30% in all parts of the US from July 2016 through September 2017

These trends have driven the growth of and within CleanSlate addiction centers. 

“They come to us for treatment, and we accept them as a patient and treat their addiction as a disease. That's part of the success, and that's part of what makes our approach attractive as opposed to other healthcare options,” he said. 

“We have more clients than ever and sadly COVID only accelerated that trend. People are struggling not just with drug addiction but with some of the impacts of it like contracting Hepatitis B and C,” he said. 

“So we’re not just protecting drugs for treatment programs but also working labs for diagnoses.” 

He said the growing workload across the expanding organization - 80 sites stretching from New England to the Southwest - made simplicity and intuitiveness in both onboarding and usage core characteristics of any monitoring software solution. 

“We saw other systems, but Sonicu had everything we knew was important to remove the manual logging we’ve been doing for far too long,” he said. 

“The Wi-Fi connectivity was a big deal and not having us use any USB device to get the logging data was also key for us. And having the alarms that can be delivered as phone calls was an important feature.” 

“We want to make sure we get the alerts anytime and especially on the weekends.”

He said his team is purposely throttling their growth opportunities to focus on patient success. 

“It’s a difficult balance for us because we can expand to even more locations because of the scale of this crisis, but we’re very focused on deliberate growth that is always about the patient and their recovery,” he said. 

“Addiction is a disease, and it requires a thoughtful approach that requires so much of our focus.” 

Exceeded our Expectations: First of the Month Quality Assurance Simplified

Elbarki said the first of the month used to be a tedious effort when he was looking to gather information needed to satisfy regulatory requirements. 

“Our quality assurance team has a process for the first of every month and it used to be a lot of manual work to gather and share our temperature monitoring data across all our sites,” he explained. 

“But when I shared our automated emails and the dashboard in the Sonicu system, our team was very excited as they saw how much time and effort this would save us.” 

My QA checklist just got a lot easier.” 

He said the design of the software exceeded his expectations in terms of simplicity and intuitiveness. 

“The dashboard is easy to navigate and the setting up of the automatic emails was not an issue. We were able to work with the Sonicu team on a few things and have a system that saves us time and provides tremendous peace of mind against the sort of risks we know are out there.” 

Ready for their Next Inspection: Stress-free temperature monitoring compliance 

CleanSlate has two regulatory bodies they report to annually. 

On the federal level, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendment (or CLIA) conducts inspections. 

The Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments of 1988 statute is an amendment to the Public Health Services Act in which Congress revised the federal program for certification and oversight of clinical laboratory testing.

The interpretive guidelines to the CLIA regulations are published in the CMS State Operations Manual (SOM). 

The SOM is used by state offices to administer various federal programs, such as clinical laboratory certification under the CLIA regulations, and enforced by CMS. 

It is also a source of guidance to laboratories for interpreting the CLIA regulations.

In short, there’s a lot of federal oversight the lab must comply with to remain in good standing. Knowing they have NIST certified temperature probes with associated certificates built into their solution is one less item to keep track of internally. 

On the state level, Massachusetts also deploys inspectors at the local sites while some other states have similar regulatory bodies.

“We have internal teams and processes organized to ensure we’re ready for regulatory inspections because we want our patients to know we’re focused on every element of their recovery, from what they see to what goes on behind the scenes,” he said. 

“And a temperature monitoring system like Sonicu is an important tool to help make their jobs easier by ensuring the critical data is always there and ready.” 

About CleanSlate Centers 

CleanSlate carries CARF ® accreditation, a third-party accreditation organization respected throughout the addiction treatment industry. 

Accreditation demonstrates that our organization is committed to reducing risk, addressing health and safety concerns, respecting cultural and individual preferences, and providing the best possible quality of care.

The centers focus on alcohol and opioid addiction with more than 110,000 patients treated to date. 

About Sonicu  

Founded in 2008 with a focus on sound monitoring in neonatal intensive care units, Sonicu has evolved into a full-service temperature and environmental monitoring firm with a wide portfolio of applications, including: 

• Ultra Low Temperature and Cryogenic
• Frozen and Cold Storage 
• Ambient Temperature and Relative Humidity 
• Air Pressure Differential
• And CO2 for Scientific Incubators 

Sonicu assembles all of its components and also develops all of its software in the United States. 

The Indiana-based company provides phone support to all of its customers from its suburban Indianapolis office during normal business hours. 

“We are committed to ensuring our customers have reliable and friendly customer service located in the heart of the country,” said Mundell.

“We recognize how important it is to deliver enduring return on investment for our customers, and staffing a dedicated support team is a big part of why our customer retention rate is above 97 percent.”

SMART Management Tools

• Eliminated manual temperature reading and logging to increase efficiency and eliminate error.
• Allowed MiraVista to input comment and context for alarm events and automatically organize reports for federal and state regulatory reporting requirements.
• Provide archived historical data to identify potential equipment problems, define operational issues and improve processes and accountability.

Simple Installation and Expansion

• Sonicu ultra-low temperature monitoring is installed easily and is fully scalable for future expansion as Cryopoint’s business continues to develop.
  

2. COMPLIANCE AUTOMATION: ALWAYS READY

Whether it’s an FDA, CDC or Joint Commission inspection or CMS auditor, the Sonicu platform will deliver ready-made reports that help you eliminate your tedious reporting process.

This transformative process improvement also reduces the opportunity for human mishap to damage your inspection or audit.

You can relax with improved peace of mind knowing that virtually any auditor and inspector will be greeted with a simple and accurate report that demonstrates your sensitive assets and environments are being monitored and you have a plan to react if your team experiences an excursion.

3. ASSET MONITORING: CONNECT, DETECT AND PROTECT

It’s more than just knowing your sensitive environments are monitored.

It’s having smart alarms that ensure your entire team is notified via text, email and even phone calls when a potentially dangerous excursion occurs.

And it’s about powerful redundancy that protects against power and network outages.

Sonicu has invested in the research and development to innovate a solution with a singular focus: your peace of mind.

We’ve architected our solution around easy installation, an intuitive user experience and rapid and enduring return on investment.

That’s why public and private organizations grow with us.

500+ customer in all 50 states 

American made products and customer service