Internet of Things Applications for Cold Chain Vaccine Tracking: A Systematic Literature Review

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to an immense effort by laboratories, governments, and non-governmental organizations to develop vaccines in record time. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), one of the major challenges for global immunization is to keep the temperature conditions of these supplies in remote areas, especially in underdeveloped countries. Monitoring the cold chain, the supply chain specializing in refrigerated goods, such as food and health items, becomes critical to their preservation. Technologies inherent to the Internet of Things, like RFID and temperature sensors, are commonly used to identify and detect physical changes in the environment in which they are embedded. This survey presents a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) conducted to identify the most relevant studies on this topic from digital libraries. Through this SLR, 23 primary studies were selected from which important data were extracted and analyzed. The presented results in this study should explain which and how the key technologies are used to control the delivery of vaccines in the cold chain, focusing on remote regions.