Domain’s Cold Chain Solution: SenseIT IoT
The cold chain industry is predicted to increase by 65% through 2020. That’s why SenseIT Iot by Domain will become an important application critical to guaranteeing successful shipments of temperature sensitive materials such as pharmaceuticals.
Based on a successful trial using SenseIT IoT, our client, Triose, a life sciences logistics firm in concert with United Health Services, a major health care provider, plans to use SenseIT IoT to differentiate offerings to customers as well as meet the standards set by insurance companies for metrics and data to prove their procedures can guarantee successful delivery of an uncompromised drug.
Using sensors from various manufacturers, SenseIT IoT captures critical data from around the world, uploads the data to the cloud, standardizes the record format, and inserts the data into a HANA database. SenseIT can be used with direct ERP integration such as SAP Business One.
Pharmaceuticals are expensive, perishable, and valuable. But the true value is the patient need. According to the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine, drug safety in the supply chain is most critical at the point closest to the patient. In this highly competitive and regulated industry, pharmaceutical companies require effective cold chain procedures so that medications will not be compromised. With that in mind, the objective of the trial with SenseIT was to determine how Triose could produce metrics needed to meet insurance company standards and thereby ensure that patients would receive medications that would not fail. Medications must be received on time and cannot be compromised during shipment.
The trial involved 10 shipments of expensive pharmaceuticals in mid-state New York, tracking the delivery of critical drugs from the hospital directly to patients’ homes. The drug in this case was a specialty medication, at a cost of $7,000 to $9,000 per vial. Each package consisted of the drug, ice pack, and sensor sealed in a Styrofoam container. In order to avoid compromising the drug, it was important to maintain a temperature of 2 to 8 degrees Celsius. With SenseIT, we know the temperatures to 1/100th of a degree. At no time did any of the shipment go outside the bounds of the temperature threshold. If it had, an alert would have been sent to the person responsible for the shipment. In some cases, this could occur in time to salvage the shipment. With SenseIT we also know where the shipment is at any time, based on GPS coordinates.
The success of SenseIT in the Triose trial has led our client to believe that combining their intellectual property with Domain’s technology will give their company a competitive edge.