“Many of the goods we ship come with a ticking clock toward expiration that is as short as 24 hours,” says Tim McClatchy, vice president of life sciences at Kenco Group. “The nature of the temperature-controlled pharmaceutical supply chain magni es all the traditional challenges shippers face.” Failures in the pharmaceutical cold chain may cost companies as much as $1 billion in lost revenue annually as well as one million lost doses, according to a Cloudleaf and Sapio Research report. In addition, medical and pharmaceutical supplies have gotten more costly. “Hospital supply expenses per patient increased 18.5% between 2019 and 2022, outpacing the rate of in ation by nearly 30%,” says John Carrico, vice president, product management for Epicor. Other costly failures include microbial spoilage and compromised medical ef cacy due to lapses in maintaining appropriate temperatures, humidity, moisture content, and packaging requirements in warehouses and transport vehicles. These failures also occur when medicines are not delivered on time. “Products must be tracked to ensure authenticity and quality,” says Carrico. “Outbreaks, seasonal illnesses, or unexpected events can also have detrimental effects on healthcare supply chains.” OPTIMIZING HEALTHCARE LOGISTICS Logistics and supply chain ef ciency go a long way toward reducing spoilage and late deliveries. Due to the criticality of their goods, medical and pharmaceutical shippers and their supply chain partners must take extenuating factors into account to mitigate the risk of spoilage and damage. When sending critical medical supplies from coast to coast, for instance, shippers must factor in the possibility
The traditional supply chain challenges shippers face are magnified in the pharmaceutical supply chain because goods often have strict expiration dates and temperature restrictions. (PHOTO: Kenco)
of seasonal, weather-related delays along the route, such as tornadoes or hurricanes. “Even short delays caused by severe weather can lead to spoiled products,” McClatchy notes. Breakdowns in the last mile can also sabotage delivery effectiveness. “One of the biggest challenges in managing last- mile logistics for the healthcare supply chain is ensuring compliance with regulations related to the handling and transportation of items such as specimens and healthcare records,” says Anar Mammadov, CEO of Senpex, a courier delivery service. COORDINATE AND INTEGRATE Healthcare shippers and their logistics and technology providers are also focused on improving system integration and supply chain coordination. Though the healthcare sector is known for cutting-edge medical care, its back-end technologies and processes aren’t always as updated as they should be. Many healthcare systems are not operating with integrated technology networks. Consequently, data coming from disparate systems isn’t always uniform, which can cause errors. That coveted “single version of the truth” is frequently lacking. One example is a recent merger of
two West Coast hospital networks that were challenged to nd a solution for combining their electronic medical record systems. The workaround was for physicians and medical practitioners to toggle between two different systems, depending upon which hospital network a patient belonged to. Many healthcare networks and pharmaceutical companies struggle with whether to update their own antiquated IT systems or invest in new third- party solutions. “Having your own internal system may be appealing from a cost-savings perspective, but the time and resources needed to maintain and update an internal system—while keeping up with the pace of change in healthcare—quickly limits its usability as a long-term solution,” says Kristen Miles, vice president, healthcare product strategy at Oracle. SPOTLIGHT ON RISK Managing the risk of supply chain disruptions is a growing concern for the healthcare supply chain. In the United States, the industry relies heavily on components from China and other countries to a degree where disruptions in those global relationships put the supply chain at risk. “China alone controls about 20% of
146 Inbound Logistics • July 2024
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