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Articles

Recommendations help pharmacies, healthcare providers and patients deal with natural disasters or power outages

CBER gives guidance for handling temperature-sensitive pharmaceticals in local storage

French cold-chain supplier adds to its existing European, US and Australian depots

Sofrigam partners with global warehouser to position shipping containers around the world

Tracking at the lot- rather than the item-level could address many security and tracking goals

AmerisourceBergen proposes a new approach to serialization

Company points finger at its specialty pharmacy for unreported deaths, but still gets hit with a Form 483

Jazz Pharmaceutical's Xyrem drug has adverse-events, REMS problems

The move by the CDMO—who also houses a North American HQ in Indiana—expresses its interest in providing compliant storage and logistics solutions globally.

Singota Solutions Opens New Plant in Balerna, Switzerland

The thermal packaging company not only bolsters its APAC presence—it also grows its influence in the life sciences’ temperature-monitoring logistics sector.

Cold Chain Technologies Inks Deal for Global Cold Chain Solutions

The facilities are expected to offer pharma shipment support by addressing time and temperature-specific requirements. 

UPS Welcomes Three New Cross-Dock Plants

Cryoport's business unit, Cryogene, will be tasked with helping to foster the growth of Moffitt’s cell and gene therapy efforts.

Moffitt Cancer Center, Cryoport Strike Biorepository Agreement

The move—one that meet’s industry standards—confirms the Cryoport company’s commitment to providing quality and safety in the cold chain solutions space.

MVE Biological Solutions Registers Production Plants with the FDA

Strengthening Production Efforts Domestically 

, Alex Guillen, global pharma and life sciences director at Tive, highlights a significant concern: the rapid advancement of technology and its potential misuse by organized crime. While technology itself is not inherently dangerous, the pharma industry's slow adoption of emerging tech, such as IoT devices, sensors, and cloud-based integration, has made it vulnerable. Guillen points out that other industries have embraced these technologies much faster, enhancing their security and efficiency, while the pharma sector has lagged behind.

This technological lag creates a critical vulnerability for pharmaceutical companies, especially in supply chain management, where the risk of cyberattacks and system breaches is growing. The fast pace of technological development, coupled with the industry's lack of preparedness to defend against these threats, makes pharma particularly susceptible to malicious activities, including hacking and data manipulation. Guillen emphasizes that the industry's relatively slow uptake of advanced technologies like IoT and cloud computing has left them exposed to potential risks, especially from organized criminal groups leveraging these tools for nefarious purposes.

Ultimately, Guillen suggests that the key challenge for the pharma industry moving forward will be to rapidly enhance its technological capabilities and adopt a more proactive approach to security. By doing so, pharma companies can better protect themselves against the evolving landscape of threats, ensuring that their supply chains remain secure and resilient in the face of these emerging risks.

Guillen also comments on a 2024 report surrounding pharma supply chain security and visibility, what needs to be done in the United States to increase manufacturing output, and much more.

According to the API Innovation Center, an 

 additional 30 billion doses of essential medicines could be produced in the United States without incurring the expense of building a new manufacturing plant. What needs to be done in the US to increase output? Could it follow a blueprint set forth by Europe and other nations?

If you look historically in the last 15 years, the US been a little bit behind compared to Europe in biologic manufacturing. This is changing. It’s going quite fast—I'm sure we have those capabilities. In order for that to happen, I think there are some steps that government and manufacturers, will have to put in place in order to make sure that we, the government, stays at that level, or at least catches up with the rest of the world. In the biologic manufacturing. Thinking about that, for Supply Chain processes, a lot of the manufacturing and distribution in the United States is domestic, so biologics, are made in the US and distributed in the US, like 60&, 70%. Only 30% are being exported abroad. That means the supply chain is already adapted for the country.

If we're going to produce 30 billion doses, we're not going to stop importing doses from anywhere else, so there's going to be the need to export as well. Otherwise, it wouldn't make financial sense. Thinking about that, let's say I'm comparing to Europe, just as a point of comparison. No better, no worse. I think there is a higher complexity in the supply chain in Europe because of customs, language, labeling, regulatory—there is a complexity, especially with a lot of Europe's products being sent into the APAC region. There is a lot of knowledge over there in terms of supply chain, which is complex, and it's more difficult in Europe. I think the United States will have to step up in that area, saying, okay, it's not just about the domestic market. We also need to export to Canada, Mexico, Latin America, in order for it to make sense. Hopefully, the health in United States will get better and better, and you will not have to actually use it so much, domestically. I think one of them is to kind of step up into the supply chain, so that they are able to manage those processes, as well as other supply chains that are being done.

The other area that I will look at is when we're talking about manufacturing the doses—that's one thing—but the sourcing of that manufacturing, the sources of the APIs, of the reagents, of the chemicals, they come from somewhere. Those supply chains that have been done today—they ended up, for the majority, in some plants somewhere in the world where we are doing the manufacturing, If you want to step up that level, that supply chain will also have to be strengthened because about 60% to 70% of the APIs and reagents come from China and India, and they are coming into Europe. Right now, we have to come do the manufacturing in the US, though that means generating new supply chains working in that robustness, and making that happen. I think that in the US, as long as the manufacturers and the government put together this strengthening of the supply chain, I think there is a great opportunity to do this locally.

The other thing that really resonates right away to me is if you take personalized medicine, such as cell and gene therapy, all those new medicines that are coming are closer from manufacturing to the patient because we're not talking about mass production of chemicals. We are doing personalized medicine. We take cells from the body, send it to a lab, and back to a patient.

That kind of manufacturing is being done more locally. It doesn’t make sense to ship cell and gene therapies out of Europe and into the United States. It will make more sense to make it locally because the cold chain conditions are much tougher. The temperatures are much lower. The supply chain is more complex, and it would just make total sense to try to make it as close as possible to the patient. The nice thing about this, Nico, is that these processes and the supply chain for the cell and gene, and for all the new therapies, they are being worked on today—this is not a “don't” thing. This is something that we as an industry are working on right now, including how we're going to do it, to make this possible. If you take traditional pharma, those supply chains are already set. For new therapies, it’s something that we are building as we speak. We have meetings about it every month. How are we going to do this? If we don't build a supply chain to manage this, new therapies will not go into the market.

In the third part of his video interview with Pharma Commerce Editor Nicholas Saraceno, Alex Guillen, global pharma and life sciences director at Tive, explains what needs to be done in the United States in order to increase manufacturing output.

Analyzing Supply Chain Complexities 

 recently released a 2024 report surrounding pharma supply chain security and visibility. Could you elaborate on some of the highlights of that report?

 I went through the report and for some of the responses that we had, I knew more or less that would be the trend, but for some of them I was quite surprised, actually. When we talk about, for example, one of the biggest threats that companies are seeing today is product tampering and repackaging as one of the major ones. I was trying to see, why product tempering and repackaging? If we acknowledge that the supply chain of pharma is one of the more robust today, I wouldn't expect the biggest concern being product tampering—something happening in the product—because it is an industry which, by definition, is extremely regulated and very secure. Looking back into what could the reason of these concerns could be, for example, on this point itself, it is getting more and more complex. Supply chain complexity that we have today is probably 10 times more complex than we had only 15 years ago. That complexity itself—whether it's components, APIs being manufactured in certain parts of the world, transported across the ocean, while having manufacturing spread in different parts of the world, and then having patients in another part of the world—makes this whole supply chain very complex and very difficult to manage. 

That supply chain has been getting more and more complex through time. Due to this complexity, I can imagine that it becomes more and more difficult to protect product itself because the industry relies more and more on third-party operators. If you take an example of freight forwarders; before, if they could do 70% of it, now, they probably can do 20%, 30% of it, and they have to rely on third-party to do the rest. They cannot be everywhere, so they go to all the other companies. That makes it more difficult for freight-forwarders themselves to actually manage the proper products in the best, proper way. The same applies to the repackaging side.

When I see repackaging, I'm also thinking, if 20 years ago, we had a lot of pharmaceuticals, now, the high value is in biologicals. Biologicals are more complex under packaging, under temperature conditions, and therefore, it becomes more difficult for companies to actually handle those. We saw it through COVID. When it came to the minus 70 degrees Celsius product, the product has to be transported at this temperature. It is industry knowledge right now almost half of that got lost or wasted because of not having the infrastructure to manage it. I think that as temperatures go lower, in terms of new medicine and new therapies, it's going to be a bigger challenge to be able to manage that supply chain, whether it is a handling of the product or whether it is the repackaging of the material.

I think that was one of the first ones that it is driving. The second one is regarding temperature control. We can see that the industry is supposed to be extremely robust in terms of temperature management. Why, all of a sudden, is it so concerned as the biggest risk? I can only associate it with a huge amount of new therapies that are coming on board. If you take, last year in 2023, there were about a handful of cell and gene therapies approved by the FDA, and we see the amount that are going to be approved in 2026 is in the tens of thousands of therapies. This is a huge step up, so I think that as it gets more complex with ultra-cold temperatures, the companies need to progress in infrastructure. That doesn't happen so quickly. I think those areas are quite the biggest, recognized threats from the people we interviewed. 

The last thing that I was surprised about is the concern about theft itself. I went in to dig into some of the information on some of that we know. Actually, the pharmaceutical industry does not have such a huge number of thefts compared to other industries like luxury. Nevertheless, this could represent a fear of the future. This case is not today, but it could happen, and why it could happen is a complexity that I think some customers are just having a hard time to grasp. So those are the three areas: two of them are quite clear—trying to figure out the reason—one of them I was surprised, but it could be just a fear for the future. I will need more analyzing to find out. Maybe at LogiPharma, we get more information on if this fear is really out there, but those are definitely the three areas that I was quite impressed with.

In the second part of his video interview with Pharma Commerce Editor Nicholas Saraceno, Alex Guillen, global pharma and life sciences director at Tive, describes the highlights of a recent pharma supply chain security and visibility report that his company released.

Challenges Facing Pharma Supply Chains

Generally speaking, what immediate risks and challenges lie ahead for pharma supply chains here in 2025?

 The biggest threat for the industry right now is technology in a way, but it's not technology in itself, but rather, it’s the capability for the pharma industry to be reactive and to be able to counter the danger of organized crimes using technology. Technology is growing very fast, so as fast as it's growing, I think it's also important that companies learn how to protect themselves, defend themselves against that. We all know that even though pharmaceutical companies in relation to research and development, and manufacturing. They are quite slow in the edge of technologies, and in the supply chain, they have been quite slow. There are other industries that are much faster in terms of using IoT sensors, IoT devices, cloud information integration with different systems. 

There are other industries that are much more advanced this. The pharma industry has been quite slow in adopting that, which has actually made them more vulnerable to potential threats when it comes to technology—being able to hack systems or enter into systems. I think that's the biggest threat, but threat because of the lack of experience and lack of productivity by the industry itself.

In the first part of his video interview with Pharma Commerce Editor Nicholas Saraceno, Alex Guillen, global pharma and life sciences director at Tive, outlines the technological obstacles that lie ahead for the industry this year.

The Future of Temperature-Controlled Technology

, Delphine Perridy, chief commercial officer, Envirotainer, noted that the pharmaceutical industry is undergoing significant evolution driven by unmet patient needs, rapid scientific advancements, and the emergence of new technologies. Innovations such as gene therapies, precision medicines, and advancements in obesity treatment with GLP-1s exemplify this shift. Additionally, the integration of artificial intelligence in drug discovery is streamlining research and development processes, lowering costs, and accelerating time to market. As a result, pharmaceutical companies must adapt their business models to ensure that newly approved drugs reach patients worldwide more efficiently. Perridy also shared why ultra-precise temperature control and customized logistics solutions are so critical when it comes to biologics and personalized medicine; why has the demand for sustainable practices has risen exponentially; Where she believes the pharma cold chain is heading in the next few years in terms of technological breakthroughs and market dynamic shifts.

A transcript of Perridy’s conversation with

Where do you believe the pharma cold chain is heading in the next few years in terms of technological breakthroughs and market dynamic shifts?

 We're going to continue to see an increase in personalized medicine, cell & gene therapies, and much more complex treatments that are going to require strict requirements when it comes to cold chain solutions. That's clearly the first shift that I think we're going to continue seeing.

The second one will be the use of AI more and more in the industry. I think that we're going to be able to use artificial intelligence to do much more analysis in terms of trade lane analysis or risk management overall. I think that the second shift that we're going to see coming over the next couple of years is sustainability—it’s going to remain a topic that is not going anywhere. I think it's an important topic for the society. We can expect to get much more pressure when it comes to sustainability—it's going to be very important for us to really design packaging solutions that can be more sustainable moving forward.

The last one is the geopolitics risk; it’s also something that is probably meant to continue. I think it's very important that we work with our partners to come up with very strong logistics strategies so that we can keep pharma moving, regardless of the challenges that we are facing. We need to build resilient networks so that we can adapt quickly and continue shipping medicines wherever they need to be shipped.

In the final part of her video interview with Pharma Commerce Editor Nicholas Saraceno, Delphine Perridy, chief commercial officer, Envirotainer, forecasts the future of the pharma cold chain regarding technological advancements and changes in market dynamics.

Ensuring Safety and Efficacy in the Cold Chain Space

Why are ultra-precise temperature control and customized logistics solutions so critical when it comes to biologics and personalized medicine?

With new, emerging treatments that are more and more complex, the transportation requirements are increasing as well, so we need to ensure that the drugs remain safe [during] the shipments; more complex therapies often imply stricter requirements. The cold chain is getting colder (temperature-wise); smaller, because with the personalized medicine, we need smaller packaging; and more global as well—we need to be able to ship drugs to the more remote locations. I think that's why technology is also coming into play, and real-time monitoring is becoming very important as well.

Our customers really want to be able to follow their drug, ensuring efficacy and safety toward the entire journey. That's why it's critical for us to try to come up with new technologies where we can share real-time data with our customers and they can be entitled to act—if something is happening—by setting alerts, and trying to really follow the risk of their shipments, so risk management I would say.

In the second part of her video interview with Pharma Commerce Editor Nicholas Saraceno, Delphine Perridy, chief commercial officer, Envirotainer, explains why ultra-precise temperature control and customized logistics solutions are critical when it comes to biologics and personalized medicine.

Managing Shipment Variety

 What are the main challenges faced by shippers in the pharma industry?

The pharmaceutical industry is something which is actually very complex. It's not like other industries, and the reason is that pharmaceuticals are hazardous and non-hazardous. They are perishable and time sensitive. Many of them require temperature control. On top of that, we have shipments happening through air, shipments happening through like ocean FCL and LCL. We have over-the-road shipments. If you combine all of these, you are shipping to different countries, different regions of the world. All of them require different regulations, because it is something which is having an impact on the health, and people will consume these products. That's why following those regulations, while getting and ensuring that you are able to manage all these different complexities of hazardous, temperature control, and time-sensitive perishable cargo—has been very tough to do.

They had their teams who are managing these thousands of shipments, just being on top of them. What they have realized over time is that actually, because of the disruptions which have increased due to COVID, once-in-a-lifetime disruptions have been happening every few months since then. This has caused a lot of issues for pharmaceutical companies, because their cargo is time sensitive as well as perishable. It leads to a lot of opportunity loss, because if cargo doesn't reach the distributor on time, it cannot go on the shelves on time, and the products cannot make the revenue that they should have, so it leads to revenue loss. It also leads to loss of customer trust. If there is a disruption and you are not aware of it, the customer is aware that your cargo is impacted by the disruption, or in a normal sense, there are generally delays. You can't predict the delays very accurately, but when actual delays happen, your customer is aware of it. If they are asking it's already late, so you have to inform the customers in advance.

How do you do that for thousands of shipments? How do you ensure you are not taking any fines due to not meeting compliances? I'm talking about not just the regulatory compliances, but also the customs and carriers’ compliances. Management of so many things is very complex, and companies have been doing it on emails and spreadsheets. This is one of the biggest challenges that companies have been facing, especially in pharmaceutical manufacturing.

The second category of problems would be that few companies have actually adapted a few systems to manage their entire cross-border shipments. However, they are facing implementation issues in that they're not able to get the objectives that they wanted to get. These are the two kinds of major categories and buckets of challenges faced by the shippers in the pharmaceutical industry, manufacturers in the pharmaceutical industry, as far as the supply chain is concerned.

In an interview with Pharma Commerce Editor Nicholas Saraceno, Gautam Prem Jain, GoComet’s Co-founder and CEO, discusses obstacles encountered by shippers in the pharmaceutical sector. 

Managing Shipment Variety 

precision logistics Dan Gagnon

There are some cell and gene therapies that require “needle-to-needle logistics.” Could you describe what this process consists of, along with its benefits?

The whole concept of cell and gene—and some of this innovation—is that cells are extracted from a patient's body. They're literally re-engineered and put back into a patient's body to more organically fight off some of these diseases. It's quite a miracle. Cell and gene in terms of a volume opportunity for logistics today is very small, but you can see the success, especially, in terms of the body probably being the best tool to use to fight some of these kinds of diseases. Cell and gene therapy is extremely promising.

With needle-to-needle logistics, you can see the complication because you’re literally extracting cells out of a person. You need time and temperature management to get those cells to what I'll call “the lab.” Those cells go in, they get re-engineered. They are obviously very critical—somewhat unstable—and then they need to be brought back to the patient. And when I say the patient, usually it's back to a point-of-care facility in which it's managed by a healthcare professional, but it's a very precision-like move. We're not talking pallet loads or trailer loads of stuff. We're talking about, someone's “humanness” in cells being brought back and forth.

If something goes wrong with the extraction—because the manufacturing process does take a little bit of time—or God forbid that when the cells have been re-engineered, or are going back to the patient, the whole process has to start over again, and now you're impacting patients' lives. So this needle-to needle-logistics is going to be a much more significant part of healthcare innovation. In the future, we're going to start to see precision logistics be a much more important part of what any logistics company that's focused on healthcare just has to be good at.

How do you envision the value and impact of precision logistics developing over the next five years?

In five years, if you are a logistics or transportation company that does not have precision logistics capabilities, you're not in healthcare. At the end of the day, to move control room temperature or ambient medications and devices, it's pretty easy stuff. It's moving product from point A to point B. There are some complications around information for regulatory requirements and some of those things. but if you're going to claim to be in healthcare, you really have to be good at two things.

One, you have to be very good at understanding regulation and enabling audit defensibility for your customers. Two, when it comes to this precision logistics, you have to be very good at keeping things stored and delivered on temperature and on time. The equipment's getting better, the SOPs are getting better, but it's also a cultural thing. You need an organization to say, “there's no exception, this has to be delivered today. This has to be delivered before 8 am.” There has to be this culture of service, that you're going to have happen if you stay in healthcare five years from now, and if cell and gene—and precision logistics—gets as big as we think it will.

In the final portion of his Pharma Commerce video interview, Dan Gagnon, UPS Healthcare’s VP of Global Strategy & Acquisition Integration, discusses the value in needle-to-needle and precision logistics, including its impact over the course of the next five years.

The Importance of Precision Logistics

Dan Gagnon biologics preservation

What challenges surround the preservation of biologics, and what role have transparency & visibility played in this effort?

A lot has changed. A while back, we didn't even what was in a box, or what was on a pallet, or whether it had temperature requirements. There was complete ignorance to what was being moved from point A to point B. The evolution that has happened is that transparency and visibility of what's in the box, what the temperatures are, when things have to be delivered, if something has experienced an excursion or not, all of that data is now available. The equipment and the processes are absolutely there—they've evolved today.

I think the struggle that many logistics companies and transportation companies are working on now is cost management, because I think all the pieces are in place, but now it's trying to drive down cost to deliver on time and within temperature. This is going to be a very logistics thing to say, but most people don't recognize trade flow imbalances, which is a nightmare for a transportation company. What I mean by that is there are pockets of pharmaceutical manufacturing, so airplanes and cold chain ground equipment, refrigerated trailers or reefers, they're all leaving a town full of vaccines or biologics. The problem is that those assets are really defined to manage and carry pharmaceuticals, so bringing them back generally ends up bringing them back empty.

Of course, the challenge is to figure out how to optimize a network in which every time you move an aircraft, a pallet, or a refrigerated trailer, you're trying to keep it as full as possible for every leg. A lot of companies manage milk runs from town to town to make sure that there is some consistency, but I would say that that's one of the bigger focuses. I'm not suggesting that managing excursions and cold chain overall has been completely solved. I will say that it's being solved enough that now we're saying, okay, let's continue the improvement, but let's start to do it at a more effective and efficient cost. This is where you're going to see data. You'll see AI, you'll see the applications of some of the technology designed to optimize and help providers do that.

What are the keys to maintaining stability in the healthcare space?

UPS loves healthcare because there is some stability in it. Unlike a lot of our other business, especially in the small package network, there's not this major peak during Christmas, or during the end of the year (during the holiday season). There is some stability year-round with healthcare. Now, it's not recession proof, but it is recession resistant. That’s one of the reasons we like it. There's a balance throughout the year.

Having said that, in the recession and economic downturn, there are still some impacts to healthcare. Elective surgeries come down. Also, in consumer health—things that may not be as necessary—you'll see a slowdown in some of that. For the most part, acute healthcare, trauma—the things that are big healthcare expenses—those major illnesses that require treatment continue. They continue regardless of the economy. There are bits and pieces of healthcare that really stay stable throughout a recession. An interesting dynamic (sticking with cold chain) regarding biologics and vaccines is that if you look at the drug pipeline, over 55% of the drug pipeline, especially in stage I, is a biologic or a vaccine. We're going to continue to see more output out of pharmaceutical manufacturers for these temperature-sensitive materials, which is a great thing. You're going to see the need for cold chain expand. Usually, this innovation, whether it's a vaccine or a biologic, is designed for some of the fastest growing illnesses out there: diabetes, respiratory illness, cardiac issues. Cancer is a one of the fastest growing disease categories, and a lot of these solutions, vaccines, and biologics are designed to treat those fast growing chronic diseases. Where I'm going with all of this is that I do think we're going to continue to see growth, especially within pharma and very specific subsegments of pharma, regardless of whether the economy is declining or not.

In this part of his Pharma Commerce video interview, Dan Gagnon, UPS Healthcare’s VP of Global Strategy & Acquisition Integration, dives into the challenges of safeguarding these products, while also sharing his keys to sustaining stability in the ‘recession resistant’ healthcare industry. 

Obstacles Facing Biologics Preservation

Dan Gagnon temperature-sensitve biologics

Given your plethora of healthcare supply chain experience, could you describe the evolution of frozen/cold biologics in the logistics space?

 When we started, logistics companies and transportation companies were just moving things. And as it pertains to healthcare, there was not a lot of guidance, specifically regulatory guidance. There was a lot of guidance for manufacturing, there was a lot of guidance for what I would say are the core players within healthcare, but for the logistics providers, there wasn’t.

Many of us when we first entered the logistics space, we would take GMP—good manufacturing practices—and we'd focus on those and try to interpret what the intention of those regulations and guidance points were and apply them to logistics. Over the last 15 years, there has been a lot more attention on the regulatory side. We have now GDP—good distribution practices—coming out of Europe. There’s IATA [International Air Transport Association], which is an organization that manages regulations for airlines and air transportation. They've created some guidance around cold chain, and cold chain moves. I think that as you look through the big landscape, the shift is that logistics companies used to just be told what to do by their pharmaceutical manufacturers to enable compliance, but now what you're seeing is logistics companies take a vested interest in being proactive to be compliant.

What I really like, especially over the last six to seven years, is that logistics companies are getting ahead of it because they know logistics better than anyone else. Therefore, they understand processes and what needs to be in place to be compliant. That includes the equipment we use, the standard operating procedures, practices, background checks, and all the things that enable and exude compliance. Logistics providers are now being a little bit more aggressive.

Maybe the last piece of this one is that COVID accelerated all of that learning because we had a world and many governments—many manufacturers of vaccines and biologics—that really didn't understand logistics. All they knew is the science and they needed to get this stuff out and into arms quickly. What happened is logistics companies needed to really jump in.

I'll speak for UPS Healthcare. We started investing in freezer farms because we knew that it was going to be mRNA or deep-frozen vaccines that were going to be launched first. It really forced most in the industry—if you were going to play in healthcare—to really start to invest before that first vial was shipped. I think those were the big moves over the last 20 years.

In an interview with Pharma Commerce Editor Nicholas Saraceno, Dan Gagnon, UPS Healthcare’s VP of Global Strategy & Acquisition Integration, discusses the development of frozen/cold biologics when it comes to the logistics space, along with how the companies themselves have changed over the years.

The Evolution of Temperature-Sensitive Biologics

Cathy O'Brien UPS Health Sustainability

: What technology in the sustainability space are players in the industry adopting?

I think we need to do a lot more. When I look at what is here at LogiPharma, and when we look at what's available on the market, the big focus continues to be the container providers. We see all the packaging companies, the container companies, they're all investing in new technology that's more sustainable. How do you get a more sustainable cold chain container? That’s kind of been the story for last few years around sustainability. Obviously, vehicles are becoming more sustainable. We know that there's the big talk about sustainable aviation fuel. But for us, we're really looking at how can you use an efficient network to avoid waste. It’s linked to the masterclass. Today, we showed in the masterclass that $36 billion worth of drug product is wasted every year because of broken cold chain. So, you can adopt all these containers, which is fantastic and make them sustainable. But if you're still going to have to overproduce, oversupply, and waste and destroy product, it's not sustainable. You need to look to look at the grassroots problem, which is that we have a network that doesn't work for moving pharma product. How do you remove that waste out of the supply chain? Again, for me, that’s an area where we need to do a lot more work and investment on which we talked about today in our master class. But the innovations in technology for example, how do you make sure that an aircraft is fully utilized? That's another area where we work on heavily. We have what we call the smart logistics network and an Orion technology. That technology basically ensures that our drivers take the fastest route, they use less miles, they're for you using less fuel. Also, we’re building very efficient networks, like our aircraft, our trucks, they leave full so we’re not wasting space. When you say what technology is out there, I haven't really seen and maybe I haven't walked around enough today, but I haven’t really seen anything unique in the technology space here that we aren’t already using. What I have seen when talking to pharma companies is that more of them are actually adopting the technology that is out there with the new containers, so that’s cool. But I do think that it’s kind of superficial and we need to make sure that we're looking at the root cause of the problem, which is overcomplicated supply chains, overproduction of the product, and not managing some of that risk, so that you don’t have to basically waste product, which is not sustainable from a cost perspective, from a transport perspective, etc.

Why are control and transparency so critical in the healthcare logistics space?

At the end of the day, it's the patients, right? When you think about it, the product is going to the patient. If you don’t have the control and visibility on the whole chain along the way and if you know how long it sat on the tarmac for, then you know this patient is at the end of it. Controlling visibility is very important for a few reasons. The data needs to be able to act if there's a problem and to serve the patient as quickly as possible with the drug that they need. We talked in the masterclass about decision making. Being able to make those decisions earlier will lead back to a lot more of an efficient supply chain. In a way, it’s all interconnected. Control and visibility allow the manufacturers to produce what they need to produce when they need to produce it, supply it where it needs to go, but also manage the issues before they occur. The more data we have, the more control, the more visibility than the better decisions we all can make in order to make sure we're serving the patient at the end of at the end of the supply chain, which is what is most important.

In an interview with Pharma Commerce Editor Nicholas Saraceno, Cathy O'Brien, VP of Sales, UPS Healthcare discusses current technology that the pharma industry is adopting when it comes to sustainability.

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