Hi there, my name is Diana Isaacs. I’m a clinical pharmacist and a diabetes care and education specialist at the Cleveland Clinic Diabetes Center.

Today I want to talk to you about insulin. How do you store insulin? I’m not sure many people realize, but insulin is actually very fragile and needs to be stored a certain way to really work the most effectively.

So, we have a trusted insulin pen here, and generally, if we have extra pens, we want to store them in the refrigerator, making sure to avoid cold or warm spots within our refrigerator.

But the pen we’re using should be kept at room temperature until its expiration date—usually 28 days, though for some types of insulin it can be a little longer.

So, what’s a person to do when it’s summer and you want to go to the beach, or the car is hotter than usual?

I see a lot of people using coolers with ice packs and putting their insulin in there, but that’s really not ideal because insulin can actually freeze—and freezing ruins it.

On the other hand, if you do nothing and leave it in a hot car, the insulin degrades and loses potency. So it’s not going to work properly either.

So I want to introduce you to another potential option. It’s called the VIVICap1.

It’s a cap you can place on your insulin pen to replace the regular pen cap, just like this. And it actually protects it. So if it’s sitting in a hot car or out on the beach, it will keep the insulin protected all day long.

And if you want to make sure the temperature is acceptable and still at room temperature, you can press this button [on the bottom] here. If you see a green light, that indicates your insulin is at a safe temperature and it’s okay to inject.

One of these can last many, many years—you can reuse it, and all that good stuff. And it’s cleared by the FDA, so hopefully this can be a good option for some people, especially in summer when it gets really hot. We want to make the most of our insulin and not let any go to waste.