EcoHealth Alliance is dedicated to preserving human and animal health through local conservation, including saving endangered species and their habitats. They look for links between ecological disruption and wildlife and human health that involve emerging diseases, such as viruses. Through this research they often uncover the intricate links between delicate ecosystems, wildlife and human health and how diseases such as HIV/AIDS, Ebola, SARS and Nipah virus can be transmitted between animals and humans. As an example, it is said that HIV/AIDS jumped to humans by people eating monkey meat.
EcoHealth Alliance scientists’ work involves collecting oral swabs, urine, feces and blood samples from animals so that they can document the animal’s health status. The university doing their laboratory testing recommended EIM and our CryoLabels® for labeling their specimens. However, what EcoHealth Alliance needed went beyond just lab labels. They needed a complete, yet portable label printing system to reliably identify samples taken out in the field, which are then transferred in cryogenic storage back to the USA for testing. The solution EIM provided includes not only durable CryoLabel® and printing ribbons, but also network-compatible BarTender® label design and printing software.
To do this research, their scientists concentrate on areas where dense human populations live close to diverse animal populations in remote areas. Local veterinarians and students help monitor virus activity not only in the U.S. but in various countries around the world such as Bangladesh, Thailand, Mexico, Malaysia, and Brazil, to name just a few.
Besides shipping these systems to all sorts of distant locations, we regularly provide customer assistance to personnel who need assistance on learning to print their own labels. For instance, in one call with EcoHealth Alliance partners in Mexico, we worked with people anxiously trying to get one of our printing systems up and running before they headed out to do a study on migratory bats.
Our Variable Data Integration Specialist ingeniously overcame a language barrier by using Skype to demonstrate software and printer installation procedures and remotely taking control of their computer in Mexico. Not only did he show them how to connect BarTender to their database, he also uncovered the fact that a piece of ribbon was stuck in their print head. Once removed, the printing problem was solved!
It’s nice to know EIM plays a small part in such significant conservation and research efforts.
