By Ellie Gabel, Associate Editor, Revolutionized
LinkedIn: Elle Rose
LinkedIn: Revolutionized
Hospitals and medical laboratories are increasingly reliant on electronic systems for data storage, communication and asset management. How long can they survive a technology blackout? If they implement information technology (IT) strategies to protect their operations during power failures, they never have to find out.
What Power Failures Mean for Medical Facilities
In health care, uptime is vital for preserving business continuity and for saving lives. Despite its criticality, unplanned downtime is common, and the consequences can be deadly.
Compromised Cold Chain Storage
Once a health care facility loses power, the risk of equipment malfunctions, temperature fluctuations and data loss increases dramatically. Since most immunobiologics must be stored at 36° Fahrenheit to 46° Fahrenheit, losing refrigeration means sample degradation. The ripple effects would be felt across the cold chain.
Financial and Compliance Risks
Biologic sample degradation necessitates costly repeat testing, as these protein-based drugs can become ineffective or harmful if stored outside their required temperature zone. For instance, denatured proteins could trigger adverse immune reactions, creating legal liability.
Possible consequences include inaccurate test results and poor patient outcomes. Laboratories that do not catch affected samples in time could face financial and compliance repercussions, leading to reputation loss and costly penalties.
Drop in Positive Patient Outcomes
Power failures compromise biologic drug efficacy, rendering medical interventions ineffective. At best, clinicians quickly replace the drugs and patients experience no long-term health effects. At worst, retesting samples or replacing immunobiologics delays care, worsening outcomes.
How to Assess Biologic Storage Vulnerabilities
Administrators should closely follow the common causes of power outages in health care to determine their risk level. Every clinic is vulnerable to severe weather events, cyberattacks, misconfigurations, critical infrastructure failure or human error.
In America, severe weather and both physical and cyberattacks strain the aging power grid. The number of attacks more than doubled from 2022 to 2023, going from 30 incidents to over 60. As the country’s grid load increases, blackouts could become even more frequent.
When an outage occurs, prioritizing biologic storage is essential. Samples and drugs have far-reaching downstream effects. Clinicians should not open the medical fridge unless necessary. Administrators should train them on emergency procedures and deploy redundancies to mitigate operational disruptions.
According to the American Hospital Association, most clinics have contingency plans to sustain operations for up to 72 hours consecutively. However, cybersecurity experts recommend planning for 30 days out. Many are not even close to implementing such plans because they consider it unnecessary. With outages on the rise, it is quickly becoming business-critical, not a “nice-to-have.”
IT Strategies for Protecting Biologics During Outages
Health care IT professionals play a central role in fortifying clinics and laboratories against power failures.
Install Smart Sensors in Cold Storage
Installing internet-connected sensors in cold storage facilitates proactive interventions by alerting staff when temperatures approach predetermined thresholds. Battery-powered sensors can last for years because they are energy-efficient and do not pull power from backup generators. In addition to sounding alerts instantaneously, they can continuously log data during downtime.
Deploy Redundant Power Systems
In 2025, Spain and Portugal experienced a major blackout lasting hours. Medical services came to a near standstill, as professionals were forced to prioritize urgent care. For some time, the team tried to complete administrative duties manually. Their backup generators were insufficient, and they had to leave at sunset.
Viewing power from an IT standpoint is crucial. Ideally, professionals deploy monitoring and management software for microgrids. Hybrid systems support continuity by diversifying energy sources and enable solutions like blockchain-enabled peer-to-peer energy trading.
Redundant systems provide uninterrupted power, helping laboratories maintain biologics’ integrity. They also keep electronic health record (EHR) systems up and running, which benefits patients. Research shows EHR downtime directly connects to clinical decision-making delays and errors. Documentation mistakes increased by 28% during downtime.
Use Building Information Management
Building information management systems allow the team to visualize and manage assets. In addition to providing holistic oversight during outages, it gives decision-makers insights into redesigning electrical systems and electronic devices to improve resilience.
Considering Proactive Power Outage Prevention
Administrators should consider a technology-agnostic approach. They should take a neutral stance on specific brands or platforms and instead focus on the broader benefits of implementing certain types of systems to safeguard biologics. Interoperability and reliability take priority. If they plan carefully, they can increase their resilience and improve patient outcomes.