Today’s medical needs include safe methods of storage for items such as blood and various tissue samples for testing purposes. These must be handled antiseptically as well as stored in specific temperatures. For these and other reasons, they cannot simply be stored in a typical residential freezer or refrigerator. The medical material, whether it be blood samples, or tissue as in pap smear results, need to be stored needs a controlled environment where they will be saved for some future purpose, and this medical refrigeration equipment needs to be securely locked to prevent any malicious contamination or theft.

Medical clinics such as private doctor’s offices often have nothing more than a residential grade refrigerator to keep tissue samples taken from patients, but they generally do not hold them for more than a few hours while awaiting transportation to a hospital or lab. There are biological standards by which all such materials must be handled and stored in order to assure the safety and the quality of any medical related materials.

For controlled purposes there are various classifications of storage, generally classified by temperature and or humidity within a secure controlled environment:

• Environmental control involves precise control of both temperature and humidity for long term preservation of collectible materials. This may involve stainless steel walls and ducting, allowing circulation of temperature controlled air. Generally a dry environment ideal for computer media storage.
• Preventative conservation storage insures dust free, temperature controlled, secure storage for items ranging from collectibles to medical tissue samples to blood.
• Stability storage may include walk in size storage containers such as freezers and refrigerated areas that require temperature control, meant for long term storage of items such as blood plasma and body tissue, pharmaceutical supplies, or quarantined materials.
• Moderate or ambient temperature storage generally has moderate temperature control in the range of sixty degrees centigrade down to negative two degrees centigrade. Many pharmaceutical items, solvents, dry materials, nasal sprays, tablets and capsules will store well at this medical refrigeration grade temperature.
• Low temp storage from negative two degrees centigrade down to around negative sixty degrees centigrade considered ideal for food products such as meat, nitrate film, toxins, and pharmaceuticals. Humidity can be controlled variably.
• Ultra low temps from negative sixty degrees centigrade to negative eighty six degrees centigrade prove ideal for reagents, biological supplies, and tissue specimens.
• Vapor phase nitrogen and cryogenic temperatures from negative one hundred fifty degrees centigrade to negative one hundred ninety six degrees centigrade is ideal for preservation of bone marrow, stem cells, and biological and tissue samples.

These controlled storage facilities are secured by locking devices and have the assurance of back up systems to guarantee that the temperature remains at the designated controlled level. There is need for back up systems which include additional storage capacity such as additional freezers and medical refrigeration equipment whenever the substances to be stored are critical to human life and there is a need to preserve the items for long periods of time.