If you a provider of specialty freight services, you know how different products have different needs in terms of how they can be moved from place to place. When it comes to moving some products from place to place, the temperature needs to be kept within a certain range. This is usually the case for many food products such as produce, meat or other animal proteins, and dairy items. It is also true when it comes to pharmaceuticals transportation.
It is often essential when you are dealing with pharmaceuticals transportation to get the medications from point A to point B while making sure the temperatures they experience do not impact their efficacy.
The importance of temperature control in pharmaceuticals transportation:
When you are dealing with the supply chain and pharma logistics services, the movement is often from one medical facility to a second facility. The products that are being moved in these processes can be very sensitive to changes in temperature. When this happens, the medications themselves can begin to degrade, which can and does have disastrous effects on how the medications work. They can be rendered useless or they can become more potent, leading to patients receiving toxic levels that can cause serious harm or result in the person dying.
For the most part, when you are working with pharmaceuticals transportation, you need to keep the product between 36 and 46 degrees Fahrenheit (that is 2 and 8 degrees Celsius). In some cases, the products must be kept even colder. In most instances, warehouses measure the temperature in Celsius and the coldest a medical product can be kept is negative 20 degrees Celsius.
The importance of proper temperature control in warehouses:
The monitoring of the temperatures at which medications are kept needs to begin before they start their journey from one place to another. It is also critically important that when they are in a warehouse, they are kept at the right temperature. The equipment that is used to store these products must undergo testing to make sure they can be kept at the right temperature and will not be impacted if the outside temperature changes. Testing needs to be done on the building, the coolers that are used, and the truck that is utilized to handle the pharmaceuticals transportation.
After everything has been tested and has met the appropriate standards, they need to be monitored to make sure nothing malfunctions and that they are still able to stay at the right temperature for the products. There need to be contingency plans in place, for example, a generator should be on site to prevent issues in the event of a power outage. There also needs to be a plan for a crisis. It is impossible to predict when one might occur but it is possible to be prepared when one does hit.
Problems often happen when pharmaceutical products are on the road:
From the time a medical product leaves the warehouse until the time it arrives at its destination, a lot can happen. Unpredictable things may occur during the trip from points A to B. Accidents can happen. Terrible weather can strike. There have even been instances when bugs or debris from outside of the vehicle has gotten into the products. To combat this and to keep everything safe, most companies that deal with pharma logistics solutions use parcel and pallet shipments.
Shipments that are parcels use containers that have been tested on a national and international level. These are tested for their ability to maintain a constant temperature.
When using the pallet shipment process, everything is more stringent. There are different tests that are conducted on pallet shipment containers. In one of these tests, a shipment of real pharmaceutical products is sent across the country in pallet containers. Along the way, the shipment is monitored for any fluctuations in the temperature. These tests are run in both hot and cold months. This helps to make sure the pallet containers are of a good enough quality to trust with sensitive pharmaceutical products.
Keeping pharmaceutical products at the correct temperature is essential to keeping them in the right condition to be used safely by patients all over the nation.