Page 8 - ITLN September - October 2023 for Magzter

Cover Story
Pharma
Logistics

especially in cold chain
transport,”he said.
Beyond that, he is also
interested about how to ensure
capacity and equipment availability
with the right costing and pricing.
“In the last two to three years, rates
went skyrocketing. We were paying high
and were still not getting the service
level,” he added.
For example, credit rating agency
ICRA in July 2023, while announcing
that it expects the revenues of the
sample set of 25 Indian pharmaceutical
companies (which account for
60 percent of the overall Indian
pharmaceutical industry) to grow by 7-9
percent in FY2024, post a YoY growth of
10 percent in FY2023, reported that high
raw material and freight prices were a
drag on margins in H1 FY2023 and these
input costs have stabilised now.
He notes that there is a lot of
technology available in terms of
geofencing and real-time tracking but
what they are looking for, at a relevant leveraging technology for making the
cost point, is being able to be predictive, transaction seamless with the logistics
preventive and prescriptive. service providers.”
As he puts it, “How can I know For instance, DHL’s white
before a temperature excursion or paper "Delivering Next-Level
the geofencing or the drug security is Healthcare" published in June 2023
at risk of breach. How can I prevent observed the trends including the
it from happening and when it is increasing individualization in life
happening, what kind of prescriptive sciences and healthcare and new
mechanisms can I have so that I can therapeutic approaches, including
minimise the damage.” biopharmaceutical products and gene-
According to him, just having the based medicine.
information is not good enough. The whitepaper reads, “The identified
If the temperature excursion has trends are reshaping healthcare delivery
already happened it is too late and too We shippers are across various sectors of life sciences
little for me. My drugs are already at educating our partners and healthcare industries, including
risk of being branded as not meeting on the consequences medical devices, consumer healthcare,
the quality and efficacy standards. of temp excursions, pharmaceuticals, clinical trials, and
It needs to be predictive about what governmental and non-governmental
can go wrong and it needs to tell me products should not be organizations. These transformations
what actions I need to take so that I exposed to light and place new and sometimes varying
can prevent it from happening. If I'm products should not demands on healthcare supply chains,
able to predict and can prescribe what be exposed to varied either by introducing complexity to
needs to be done, I need to prevent it temperatures. existing processes or by necessitating
from happening.” the adoption of entirely new supply
Thus just having real-time visibility is Dimple Parikh chain models. This includes ranging
not good enough anymore. Lupin from improved visibility and distribution
Emphasising the increasing need for control over-segmentation of supply
technology and innovations in the supply He said, “They are looking at chains and distribution channels to
chain, Srivastava notes that bigger biosimilars, vaccines and complex rigorous protection of the shipments
companies that are higher up in the injectables, they will all have the same and end-to-end real-time condition
drug development and delivery, maturity kind of requirements not just in terms monitoring – to ensure product integrity.”
curve are moving towards complex and of visibility, predictive, preventive As Parikh and Srivastava pointed
more difficult to make formulations. and prescriptive, but also in terms of more towards the need for training
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